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1922 4945

Cottf^ttfs

1922.04.12 - Adolf Hitler - speech
1922.07.28 - Adolf Hitler - speech
1922.09.18 - Adolf Hitler - speech

in Munich
in Munich
in Munich

1923.04.10
1923.04.13
1923.04.24
1923.04.27
1923.05.01
1923.05.04
1923.08.01
1923.09.12

Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler

speech
speech
speech
speech
speech
speech
speech
speech

1924.02.26 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

1924.03.27 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

in
in
in
in
in
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Munich
Munich
Munich
Munich
Munich
Munich
Munich
Munich

11
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31
33
37
39
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43
46
48

1927.01.18 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Schleiz, Thuringia
1927.08.21 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Nuremberg

57
65

1930.09.16 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

1932.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party

1932.01.27 - Adolf Hitler addressed the Industry Club in Dusseldorf

73
77

1933.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party 100

1933.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation 102

1933.02.01 - Adolf Hitler - announcement and proclamation to the NSDAP 103

1933.02.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin 104

1933.02.01 - The first radio-broadcast of Adolf Hitler 105

1933.03.23 - Adolf Hitler - policy statement on the Enabling Act 109

1933.03.23 - Speech duel between Adolf Hitler and Otto Wels 119
1933.05.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Lustgarten, Berlin 126

1933.05.17 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag 132

1933.09.01.03 - Adolf Hitler - excerptions of speeches at the Party Congress 141
in Nuremberg

1933.09.13 - Adolf Hitler - speech about Winterhilfe 144

1933.10.14 - Adolf Hitler - radio broadcast 146

1933.11.08 - Adolf Hitler - speeches honouring the lO.anniversary of 1923 153

1934.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party 156

1934.01.27 - Adolf Hitler - interview for the writer Hanns Johst 157

1934.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - Speech to the Reichstag 161

1934.02. 18 - Ward Price - interview with Adolf Hitler 174

1934.02.24 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Festsaal of the Hofbrauhaus 176

1934.04.04 - Adolf Hitler - interview for Associated Press 177
1934.05.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech at a youth rally in Lustgarten 181
1934.06. 17 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Gera 185
1934.07. 13 - Adolf Hitler - Speech to the Reichstag 187

1934.08.05 - Ward Price - interview with Adolf Hitler 202

1934.08.07 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Hindenburg's funeral in Tannenberg 207
Monument

1934.08.17 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Hamburg at the Blohm and Voss 209
shipyard

1934.08.20 - Adolf Hitler - appeal to the German Volk and the NSDAP 213

1934.09.05 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation 214

1934.09.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the DAF and RAD 217

1934.09.07 - Adolf Hitler - speech before 200 000 political leaders 218

1934.09.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech before the SA and the SS 222
1934.10.09 - Adolf Hitler - at the opening of the second Winterhilfswerk 224

1934.11.08 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Burgerbraukeller 225

1934.11.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Feldherrnhalle 227

1935.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party 228

1935.01. 15 - Adolf Hitler - speech on radio 229

1935.01.16 - Adolf Hitler - interview to Pierre Huss 231

1935.01.17 - Adolf Hitler - interview with Ward Price 233
1935.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - address to the Reichstag 236
1935.03.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Saarbrucken 238
1935.03.16 - Adolf Hitler - Proclamation to the German Folk 243
1935.05.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Tempelhofer Feld 248

1935.05.21 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Reichstag 250
1935.09. 1 1 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation 260

1935.09.11 - Adolf Hitler - speech at NSDAP congress hall in Nuremberg 262

1935.09.12 - Adolf Hitler - speech before the DAF and the RAD 264

1935.09. 13 - Adolf Hitler - address to 100,000 Political Leaders 265

1935.09.14 - Adolf Hitler - speeches speech before 54,000 members of the 268
Hitler Youth in the Nuremberg stadium

1935.09.15 - Adolf Hitler - speech before the SA and the SS 269

1935.09. 15 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag 270

1935.09.16 - Adolf Hitler - closing speech at the NSDAP congress in 273
Nuremberg

1935.09. 16 - Adolf Hitler - speech for the Wehrmacht Day 274

1935.10.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Erntedankfest (Thanksgiving) 276
1935.10.08 - Adolf Hitler - opening speech at the third Winterhilfswerk 278

1935.11.08 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Burgerbraukeller 280

1936.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party 285

1936.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Berlin Lustgarten 286

1936.02. 12 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Schwerin 288

1936.02.15 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the German automobile industry 291

1936.02.24 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich 295

1936.03.07 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag 296

1936.03.09 - Ward Price - interview with Adolf Hitler 311
1936.03. 12 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Karlsruhe 314
1936.03.20 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Hamburg 317

1936.03.22 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Breslau 319

1936.03.24 - Adolf Hitler - campaign speech in Berlin 321

1936.03.27 - Adolf Hitler - campaign speech in Essen 323

1936.03.28 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Cologne 325
1936.05.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Lustgarten 328

1936.07.03 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Weimar 330
1936.08.01 - Adolf Hitler - addresses the Olympic commitee 332

1936.09.08 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Nuremberg City Hall 333

1936.09.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Culture Convention 336

1936.09.10 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Labor Service 337

1936.09.11 - Adolf Hitler - appeal to the Political Leaders of Germany 338

1936.09.12 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the German Labor Front 339

1936.09.12 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Hitler Youth 340

1936.09. 13 - Adolf Hitler - speech to SA and SS 341

1936.09.14 - Adolf Hitler - final speech at the Party Congress 342
1936.09.14 - Adolf Hitler - speech on the Wehrmacht Day 345

1936.10.04 - Adolf Hitler - declaration on the Buckeberg 347
1936.10.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin 348
1936.11.08 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Burgerbraukeller 349

1937.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party 351

1937.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - Speech to the Reichstag 352
1937.05.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Lustgarten 362
1937.06.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Regensburg 363
1937.06.27 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Wurzburg 366
1937.07. 19 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich 368

1937.07.31 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Breslau 373

1937.09.06 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation 375

1937.09.07 - Adolf Hitler - speech about the culture 378

1937.09.08 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Labor Service 380
1937.09.10 - Adolf Hitler - speechl to the Political Leaders of Germany 381
1937.09.10 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the German police 382

1937.09.10 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the German women 383

1937.09.11 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the German Labor Front 385

1937.09.11 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Hitler Youth 387

1937.09.12 - Adolf Hitler - speech to SA,SS&NSKK 388

1937.09.13 - Adolf Hitler - closing speech at the NSDAP congress in 389
Nuremberg

1937.09.13 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Wehrmacht 395

1937.09.26 - Adolf Hitler - addressed Benito Mussolini 396
1937.09.28 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Tempelhofer Feld 398
1937.10.03 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Erntedankfest (Thanksgiving) 401

1937.10.05 - Adolf Hitler - opening speech at the new Winterhilfswerk 403

1937.11.08 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Burgerbraukeller 404
1937.11.20 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Old Guard in Munich 405
1937.11.22 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Ordensburg Sonthofen 406

1937.11.27 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Technical University in Berlin 409
1937.12.12 - Adolf Hitler - an official statement 411

1938.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party 412

1938.01.22 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich 413

1938.02.20 - Adolf Hitler - great speech before the Reichstag 415

1938.03.12 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation for the Anschluss 425

1938.03.15 - Adolf Hitler proclaims the liberation of Austria 428

1938.03. 18 - Adolf Hitler - speech before the Reichstag 430

1938.03.25 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Konigsberg 436

1938.04.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Vienna 441
1938.05.01 - Adolf Hitler - two speeches 443
1938.05.03 - Adolf Hitler - address to 6,500 Germans living abroad 445
1938.05.22 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the opening ceremonies for work 446
1938.05.26 -Adolf Hitler- VW speech 449
1938.05.30 - Adolf Hitler - The Plan Green 451

1938.06. 14 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin 455

1938.07.10 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Great Exhibition of German Art in 457
Munich

1938.09.06 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation 459
1938.09.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Culture Convention 462

1938.09.09,10&11 - Adolf Hitler - three speeches 464

1938.09. 12 - Adolf Hitler - closing speech 466

1938.09.12 - Adolf Hitler - speech on the Wehrmacht Day 475

1938.09.17 - Ward Price - interview with Adolf Hitler 476

1938.09.23 - Adolf Hitler - letter in response to Chamberlain 478

1938.09.23 - Adolf Hitler - paper of September 23, 1938 481

1938.09.26 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Sportpalast 483

1938.09.27 - Adolf Hitler - reply to Chamberlain 492

1938.09.27 - Adolf Hitler - reply to F.D.Roosevelt 494

1938.10.01 - Adolf Hitler - decree 497

1938.10.03 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Eger 499

1938.10.04 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Karlsbad 500

1938.10.05 - Adolf Hitler - opening speech at the new Winterhilfswerk 501

1938.10.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Saarbrucken 503
1938.10.20 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Krumau 506

1938.11.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Weimar 508

1938.11.08 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Burgerbraukeller 511

1938.11.10 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Fuhrerbau 515

1938.12.02 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Reichenberg 524
1938.12.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich 525

1939.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party 528

1939.01.09 - The Reich Chancellery - essay by Adolf Hitler 531
1939.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - address to the Reichstag 535

1939.02. 14 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Hamburg 552
1939.02.17 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin 555

1939.02.24 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich 558

1939.03.15 - Adolf Hitler - Proclamation to the German Volk 559
1939.03.23 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Memel 560
1939.04.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Wilhelmshaven 561

1939.04.28 - Adolf Hitler - speech before the Reichstag 566
1939.05.01 - Adolf Hitler - two speeches 595
1939.06.04 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Reichs Veterans Day in Kassel 601

1939.06.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech to Legion Condor soldiers in Lustgarten 605

1939.07.16 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Day of the German Art 608

1939.08.22 - Adolf Hitler - speech before his generals 610
1939.09.01 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation to the German Wehrmacht 614
1939.09.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the German Reichstag 615
1939.09.03 - Adolf Hitler - Four Appeals 621
1939.09. 19 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Danzig 626

1939.10.06 - Adolf Hitler - speech before the Reichstag 639
1939.10.10 - Adolf Hitler - opening speech at the new Winterhilfswerk 656

1939.11.08 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Burgerbraukeller 659

1939.11.23 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the OKW 669

1939.12.07 - Adolf Hitler - Germany and the Finnish Question 675

1940.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party and the Wehrmacht 678

1940.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Sportpalast 681

1940.02.24 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich for the 20-th anniversary of the 691
NSDAP

1940.03.10 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Berlin Zeughaus 697

1940.05.03 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Berlin Sportpalast 700

1940.05.10 - Adolf Hitler - Proclamation to the Soldiers of the Western 708
Front

1940.07. 19 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag 709

1940.09.04 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Berlin Sportpalast on the opening 730
of the Kriegswinterhilfswerk

1940.11.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Lowenbraukeller 739

1940.12.10 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the workers of a Berlin 746
1940.12.18 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Berlin Sportpalast 753

1941.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party and the Wehrmacht 763

1941.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Sportpalast 767

1941.02.24 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich 773

1941.03. 16 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin 776

1941.04.18 - Adolf Hitler - appeal for the Second Kriegswinterhilfswerk 778

1941.05.04 - Adolf Hitler - Speech to the Reichstag 779

1941.06.22 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation to the German folk 792

1941.10.02 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation to the soldiers of the Eastern Front 799

1941.10.03 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin Sportpalast 801
1941.11.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Lowenbraukeller 810

1941.12.11 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag - The German Reich 820
declares war on the U.S.A.

1941.12.20 - Adolf Hitler - appeal to the German folk 838

1942.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party and the Wehrmacht 839

1942.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Sportpalast 843

1942.02.12 - Adolf Hitler - speech in honour of Fritz Todt 851

1942.02.24 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation for the 22-nd anniversary of the 856
NSDAP - read by Gauleiter Wagner

1942.03.15 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin for Heroes' Memorial Day 858

1942.04.26 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag 862

1942.09.30 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Sportpalast 874

1942.11.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Lowenbraukeller 885
1942.11.11 - Adolf Hitler - appeal to the French people 897
1942.11.26 - Adolf Hitler - letter to Marshal Petain 889

1943.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party and the Wehrmacht 903

1943.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation 908

1943.02.24 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation 909

1943.03.21 - Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin 916
1943.05.07 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the funeral ceremony for Viktor Lutze 920

1943.05.10 - Adolf Hitler - appeal for the fourth Kriegswinterhilfswerk 922
1943.09. 10 - Adolf Hitler - speech to the German Folk 923
1943.11.09 - Adolf Hitler - speech in the Lowenbraukeller 928

1944.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party and the Wehrmacht 938

1944.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - radio-broadcasted speech to the German Folk 945

1944.03.19 - Adolf Hitler - interview for a Swedish newspaper 950

1944.07.01 - Adolf Hitler - speech on Generaloberst Dietl's dead 951

1944.07.04 - Adolf Hitler - speech at the Platterhof 954

1944.07.20 - Adolf Hitler - radio address to the German Folk 956

1944.10.08 - Adolf Hitler - telegram to the Hitler Youth 958

1944.11.12 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation to the German Folk 959

1944.12.28 - Adolf Hitler - speech at Ziegenberg headquarters 966

1945.01.01 - New Year's Proclamation to the Party and the Wehrmacht 968

1945.01.30 - Adolf Hitler - radio address to the German Folk 977

1945.02.24 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation to the German Folk 981

1945.03.11 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation to the German Wehrmacht 986

1945.04.13 - Adolf Hitler - order to the German Wehrmacht 988
1945.04.13 - Adolf Hitler - proclamation to the soldiers on the Eastern Front 990

1945.04.29 - Adolf Hitler - Private Testament 991
1945.04.29.The marriage license of Adolf Hitler and Eva Hitler 992

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

April 12, 1922

^\ fter the War production had begun again and it was thought that better times were
A\coming, Frederick the Great after the Seven Years War had, as the result of
L superhuman efforts, left Prussia without a penny of debt: at the end of the World
War Germany was burdened with her own debt of some 7 or 8 milliards of marks and beyond
that was faced with the debts of 'the rest of the world' - the so-called 'reparations.' The product
of Germany's work thus belonged not to the nation, but to her foreign creditors: 'it was carried
endlessly in trains for territories beyond our frontiers.' Every worker had to support another
worker, the product of whose labor was commandeered by the foreigner. 'The German people
after twenty-five or thirty years, in consequence of the fact that it will never be able to pay all
that is demanded of it, will have so gigantic a sum still owing that practically it will be forced
to produce more than it does today.' What will the end be? and the answer to that question is
'Pledging of our land, enslavement of our labor-strength. Therefore, in the economic sphere,
November 1918 was in truth no achievement, but it was the beginning of our collapse.' And in
the political sphere we lost first our military prerogatives, and with that loss went the real
sovereignty of our State, and then our financial independence, for there remained always the
Reparations Commission so that 'practically we have no longer a politically independent
German Reich, we are already a colony of the outside world. We have contributed to this
because so far as possible we humiliated ourselves morally, we positively destroyed our own
honor and helped to befoul, to besmirch, and to deny everything which we previously held as
sacred.' If it be objected that the Revolution has won for us gains in social life: they must be
extraordinarily secret, these social gains - so secret that one never sees them in practical life -
they must just run like a fluid through our German atmosphere. Someone may say Well, there
is the eight-hour day!' And was a collapse necessary to gain that? And will the eight-hour day
be rendered any more secure through our becoming practically the bailiff and the drudge of
the other peoples? One of these days France will say: You cannot meet your obligations, you
must work more. So this achievement of the Revolution is put in question first of all by the
Revolution.

Then someone has said: 'Since the Revolution the people has gained Rights. The people
governs!' Strange! The people has now been ruling three years and no one has in practice once
asked its opinion. Treaties were signed which will hold us down for centuries: and who has
signed the treaties? The people? No! Governments which one fine day presented themselves
as Governments. And at their election the people had nothing to do save to consider the
question: there they are already, whether I elect them or not. If we elect them, then they are
there through our election. But since we are a self-governing people, we must elect the folk in
order that they may be elected to govern us.

Then it was said, 'Freedom has come to us through the Revolution.' Another of those
things that one cannot see very easily! It is of course true that one can walk down the street,
the individual can go into his workshop and he can go out again: here and there he can go to a
meeting. In a word, the individual has liberties. But in general, if he is wise, he will keep his
mouth shut. For if in former times extraordinary care was taken that no one should let slip
anything which could be treated as lese-majeste, now a man must take much greater care that
he doesn't say anything which might represent an insult to the majesty of a member of
Parliament.

And if we ask who was responsible for our misfortune, then we must inquire who
profited by our collapse. And the answer to that question is that 'Banks and Stock Exchanges
are more flourishing than ever before.' We were told that capitalism would be destroyed, and
when we ventured to remind one or other of these famous statesmen and said 'Don't forget hat
Jews too have capital,' then the answer was: 'What are you worrying about? Capitalism as a
whole will now be destroyed, the whole people will now be free. We are not fighting Jewish
or Christian capitalism, we are fighting very capitalism: we are making the people completely
free.'

Christian capitalism' is already as good as destroyed, the international Jewish Stock
Exchange capital gains in proportion as the other loses ground. It is only the international
Stock Exchange and loan-capital, the so-called 'supra-state capital,' which has profited from
the collapse of our economic life, the capital which receives its character from the single
supra-state nation which is itself national to the core, which fancies itself to be above all other
nations, which places itself above other nations and which already rules over them.

The international Stock Exchange capital would be unthinkable, it would never have
come, without its founders the supra-national, because intensely national, Jews....

The Jew has not grown poorer: he gradually gets bloated, and, if you don't believe me, I
would ask you to go to one of our health-resorts; there you will find two sorts of visitors: the
German who goes there, perhaps for the first time for a long while, to breathe a little fresh air
and to recover his health, and the Jew who goes there to lose his fat. And if you go out to our
mountains, whom do you find there in fine brand-new yellow boots with splendid rucksacks
in which there is generally nothing that would really be of any use? And why are they there?
They go up to the hotel, usually no further than the train can take them: where the train stops,
they stop too. And then they sit about somewhere within a mile from the hotel, like blow-flies
round a corpse.

These are not, you may be sure, our working classes: neither those working with the
mind, nor with the body. With their worn clothes they leave the hotel on one side and go on
climbing: they would not feel comfortable coming into this perfumed atmosphere in suits
which date from 1913 or 1914. No, assuredly the Jew has suffered no privations! . . .

While now in Soviet Russia the millions are ruined and are dying, Chicherin - and with
him a staff of over 200 Soviet Jews - travels by express train through Europe, visits the
cabarets, watches naked dancers perform for his pleasure, lives in the finest hotels, and does
himself better than the millions whom once you thought you must fight as 'bourgeois.' The
400 Soviet Commissars of Jewish nationality - they do not suffer; the thousands upon
thousands of sub-Commissars -they do not suffer. No! all the treasures which the 'proletarian'
in his madness took from the 'bourgeoisie' in order to fight so-called capitalism - they have all
gone into their hands. Once the worker appropriated the purse of the landed proprietor who
gave him work, he took the rings, the diamonds and rejoiced that he had now got the treasures
which before only the 'bourgeoisie' possessed. But in his hands they are dead things - they are
veritable death-gold. They are no profit to him. He is banished into his wilderness and one
cannot feed oneself on diamonds. For a morsel of bread he gives millions in objects of value.
But the bread is in the hands of the State Central Organization and this is in the hands of the
Jews: so everything, everything that the common man thought that he was winning for
himself, flows back again to his seducers.

And now, my dear fellow-countrymen, do you believe that these men, who with us are
going the same way, will end the Revolution? They do not wish the end of the Revolution, for
they do not need it. For them the Revolution is milk and honey.

And further they cannot end the Revolution. For if one or another amongst the leaders
were really not seducer but seduced, and today, driven by the inner voice of horror at his
crime, were to step before the masses and make his declaration: 'We have all deceived
ourselves: we believed that we could lead you out of misery, but we have in fact led you into
a misery which your children and your children's children must still bear' - he cannot say that,
he dare not say that, he would on the public square or in the public meeting be torn in pieces.

But amongst the masses there begins to flow a new stream - a stream of opposition. It is
the recognition of the facts which is already in pursuit of this system, it already is hunting the
system down; it will one day scourge the masses into action and carry the masses along with
it. And these leaders, they see that behind them the anti-Semitic wave grows and grows; and
when the masses once recognize the facts, that is the end of these leaders.

And thus the Left is forced more and more to turn to Bolshevism. In Bolshevism they
see today the sole, the last possibility of preserving the present state of affairs. They realize
quite accurately that the people is beaten so long as Brain and Hand can be kept apart. For
alone neither Brain nor Hand can really oppose them. So long therefore as the Socialist idea is
coined only by men who see in it a means for disintegrating a nation, so long can they rest in
peace.

But it will be a sorry day for them when this Socialist idea is grasped by a Movement
which unites it with the highest Nationalist pride, with Nationalist defiance, and thus places
the Nation's Brain, its intellectual workers, on this ground. Then this system will break up,
and there would remain only one single means of salvation for its supporters: viz. to bring the
catastrophe upon us before their own ruin, to destroy the Nation's Brain, to bring it to the
scaffold - to introduce Bolshevism.

So the Left neither can nor will help. On the contrary, their first lie compels them
constantly to resort to new lies. There remains then the Right. And this party of the Right
meant well, but it cannot do what it would because up to the present time it has failed to
recognize a whole series of elementary principles.

In the first place the Right still fails to recognize the danger. These gentlemen still
persist in believing that it is a question of being elected to a Landtag or of posts as ministers
or secretaries. They think that the decision of a people's destiny would mean at worst nothing
more than some damage to their so-called bourgeois-economic existence. They have never
grasped the fact that this decision threatens their heads. They have never yet understood that it
is not necessary to be an enemy of the Jew for him to drag you one day, on the Russian
model, to the scaffold. They do not see that it is quite enough to have a head on your
shoulders and not to be a Jew: that will secure the scaffold for you.

In consequence their whole action today is so petty, so limited, so hesitating and
pusillanimous. They would like to - but they can never decide on any great deed, because they
fail to realize the greatness of the whole period.

And then there is another fundamental error: they have never got it clear in their own
minds that there is a difference or how great a difference there is between the conception
'National' and the word 'dynastic' or 'monarchist.' They do not understand that today it is more
than ever necessary in our thoughts as Nationalists to avoid anything which might perhaps
cause the individual to think that the National Idea was identical with petty everyday political
views. They ought day by day to din into the ears of the masses: 'We want to bury all the petty
differences and to bring out into the light the big things, the things we have in common which
bind us to one another. That should weld and fuse together those who have still a German
heart and a love for their people in the fight against the common hereditary foe of all Aryans.
How afterward we divide up this State, friends - we have no wish to dispute over that! The
form of a State results from the essential character of a people, results from necessities which
are so elementary and powerful that in time every individual will realize them without any
disputation when once all Germany is united and free.'

And finally they all fail to understand that we must on principle free ourselves from any
class standpoint. It is of course very easy to call out to those on the Left, 'You must not be
proletarians, leave your class-madness,' while you yourselves continue to call yourself
'bourgeois.' They should learn that in a single State there is only one supreme citizen - right,
one supreme citizen - honor, and that is the right and the honor of honest work. They should
further learn that the social idea must be the essential foundation for any State, otherwise no
State can permanently endure.

Certainly a government needs power, it needs strength. It must, I might almost say, with
brutal ruthlessness press through the ideas which it has recognized to be right, trusting to the
actual authority of its strength in the State. But even with the most ruthless brutality it can
ultimately prevail only if what it seeks to restore does truly correspond to the welfare of a
whole people.

That the so-called enlightened absolutism of a Frederick the Great was possible
depended solely on the fact that, though this man could undoubtedly have decided 'arbitrarily'
the destiny - for good or ill - of his so-called 'subjects,' he did not do so, but made his
decisions influenced and supported by one thought alone, the welfare of his Prussian people.
It was this fact only that led the people to tolerate willingly, nay joyfully, the dictatorship of
the great king.

AND THE RIGHT HAS FURTHER COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THAT
DEMOCRACY IS FUNDAMENTALLY NOT GERMAN: IT IS JEWISH. It has completely
forgotten that this Jewish democracy with its majority decisions has always been without
exception only a means towards the destruction of any existing Aryan leadership. The Right
does not understand that directly every small question of profit or loss is regularly put before
so-called 'public opinion,' he who knows how most skillfully to make this 'public opinion'
serve his own interests becomes forthwith master in the State. And that can be achieved by the
man who can lie most artfully, most infamously; and in the last resort he is not the German,
he is, in Schopenhauer's words, 'the great master in the art of lying' - the Jew.

And finally it has been forgotten that the condition which must precede every act is the
will and the courage to speak the truth - and that we do not see today either in the Right or in
the Left.

There are only two possibilities in Germany; do not imagine that the people will forever
go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have
most consistently foretold the coming ruin and have sought to dissociate themselves from it.
And that party is either the Left: and then God help us! for it will lead us to complete
destruction - to Bolshevism, or else it is a party of the Right which at the last, when the people
is in utter despair, when it has lost all its spirit and has no longer any faith in anything, is
determined for its part ruthlessly to seize the reins of power - that is the beginning of
resistance of which I spoke a few minutes ago. Here, too, there can be no compromise - there
are only two possibilities: either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the
victory of the Jew.

It is from the recognition of this fact, from recognizing it, I would say, in utter, dead
earnestness, that there resulted the formation of our Movement. There are two principles
which, when we founded the Movement, we engraved upon our hearts: first, to base it on the
most sober recognition of the facts, and second, to proclaim these facts with the most ruthless
sincerity.

And this recognition of the facts discloses at once a whole series of the most important
fundamental principles which must guide this young Movement which, we hope, is destined
one day for greatness:

1. 'NATIONAL' AND 'SOCIAL ARE TWO IDENTICAL CONCEPTIONS. It was
only the Jew who succeeded, through falsifying the social idea and turning it into Marxism,
not only in divorcing the social idea from the national, but in actually representing them as
utterly contradictory. That aim he has in fact achieved. At the founding of this Movement we
formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the
two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had come to believe, on the
basis of the sincerity of our will, we christened it "National Socialist.' We said to ourselves
that to be 'national' means above everything to act with a boundless and all-embracing love
for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it. And similarly to be 'social' means so to
build up the state and the community of the people that every individual acts in the interest of
the community of the people and must be to such an extent convinced of the goodness, of the
honorable straightforwardness of this community of the people as to be ready to die for it.

2. And then we said to ourselves: THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS CLASSES:
THEY CANNOT BE. Class means caste and caste means race. If there are castes in India,
well and good; there it is possible, for there there were formerly Aryans and dark aborigines.
So it was in Egypt and in Rome. But with us in Germany where everyone who is a German at
all has the same blood, has the same eyes, and speaks the same language, here there can be no
class, here there can be only a single people and beyond that nothing else. Certainly we
recognize, just as anyone must recognize, that there are different 'occupations' and
'professions' [Stande] -there is the Stand of the watchmakers, the Stand of the common
laborers, the Stand of the painters or technicians, the Stand of the engineers, officials, etc.
Stande there can be. But in the struggles which these Stande have amongst themselves for the
equalization of their economic conditions, the conflict and the division must never be so great
as to sunder the ties of race.

And if you say 'But there must after all be a difference between the honest creators and
those who do nothing at all' - certainly there must! That is the difference which lies in the
performance of the conscientious work of the individual. Work must be the great connecting

link, but at the same time the great factor which separates one man from another. The drone is
the foe of us all. But the creators - it matters not whether they are brain workers or workers
with the hand - they are the nobility of our State, they are the German people!

We understand under the term 'work' exclusively that activity which not only profits the
individual but in no way harms the community, nay rather which contributes to form the
community.

3. And in the third place IT WAS CLEAR TO US THAT THIS PARTICULAR VIEW
IS BASED ON AN IMPULSE WHICH SPRINGS FROM OUR RACE AND FROM OUR
BLOOD. We said to ourselves that race differs from race and, further, that each race in
accordance with its fundamental demands shows externally certain specific tendencies, and
these tendencies can perhaps be most clearly traced in their relation to the conception of work.
The Aryan regards work as the foundation for the maintenance of the community of people
amongst it members. The Jew regards work as the means to the exploitation of other peoples.
The Jew never works as a productive creator without the great aim of becoming the master.
He works unproductively using and enjoying other people's work. And thus we understand the
iron sentence which Mommsen once uttered: 'The Jew is the ferment of decomposition in
peoples,' that means that the Jew destroys and must destroy because he completely lacks the
conception of an activity which builds up the life of the community. And therefore it is beside
the point whether the individual Jew is 'decent' or not. In himself he carries those
characteristics which Nature has given him, and he cannot ever rid himself of those
characteristics. And to us he is harmful. Whether he harms us consciously or unconsciously,
that is not our affair. We have consciously to concern ourselves for the welfare of our own
people.

4. And fourthly WE WERE FURTHER PERSUADED THAT ECONOMIC
PROSPERITY IS INSEPARABLE FROM POLITICAL FREEDOM AND THAT
THEREFORE THAT HOUSE OF LIES, 'INTERNATIONALISM,' MUST IMMEDIATELY
COLLAPSE. We recognized that freedom can eternally be only a consequence of power and
that the source of power is the will. Consequently the will to power must be strengthened in a
people with passionate ardor. And thus we realized fifthly that

5. WE AS NATIONAL SOCIALISTS and members of the German Workers party - a
Party pledged to work - MUST BE ON PRINCIPLE THE MOST FANATICAL
NATIONALISTS. We realized that the State can be for our people a paradise only if the
people can hold sway therein freely as in a paradise: we realized that a slave state will never
be a paradise, but only - always and for all time - a hell or a colony.

6. And then sixthly we grasped the fact that POWER IN THE LAST RESORT IS
POSSIBLE ONLY WHERE THERE IS STRENGTH, and that strength lies not in the dead
weight of numbers but solely in energy. Even the smallest minority can achieve a mighty
result if it is inspired by the most fiery, the most passionate will to act. World history has
always been made by minorities. And lastly

7. If one has realized a truth, that truth is valueless so long as there is lacking the
indomitable will to turn this realization into action!

These were the foundations of our Movement - the truths on which it was based and
which demonstrated its necessity.

For three years we have sought to realize these fundamental ideas. And of course a fight
is and remains a fight. Stroking in very truth will not carry one far. Today the German people
has been beaten by a quite other world, while in its domestic life it has lost all spirit; no longer
has it any faith. But how will you give this people once more firm ground beneath its feet save
by the passionate insistence on one definite, great, clear goal?

Thus we were the first to declare that this peace treaty was a crime. Then folk abused us
as 'agitators.' We were the first to protest against the failure to present this treaty to the people
before it was signed. Again we were called 'agitators.' We were the first to summon men to
resistance against being reduced to a continuing state of defenselessness. Once more we were
'agitators.' At that time we called on the masses of the people not to surrender their arms, for
the surrender of one's arms would be nothing less than the beginning of enslavement. We
were called, no, we were cried down as, 'agitators.' We were the first to say that this meant the
loss of Upper Silesia. So it was, and still they called us 'agitators.' We declared at that time
that compliance in the question of Upper Silesia MUST have as its consequence the
awakening of a passionate greed which would demand the occupation of the Ruhr. We were
cried down ceaselessly, again and again. And because we opposed the mad financial policy
which today will lead to our collapse, what was it that we were called repeatedly once more?
Agitators,' And today?

And finally we were also the first to point the people on any large scale to a danger
which insinuated itself into our midst - a danger which millions failed to realize and which
will nonetheless lead us all into ruin - the Jewish danger. And today people are saying yet
again that we were 'agitators.' I would like here to appeal to a greater than I, Count
Lerchenfeld. He said in the last session of the Landtag that his feeling 'as a man and a
Christian' prevented him from being an anti-Semite. I SAY: MY FEELING AS A
CHRISTIAN POINTS ME TO MY LORD AND SAVIOUR AS A FIGHTER. IT POINTS
ME TO THE MAN WHO ONCE IN LONELINESS, SURROUNDED ONLY BY A FEW
FOLLOWERS, RECOGNIZED THESE JEWS FOR WHAT THEY WERE AND
SUMMONED MEN TO THE FIGHT AGAINST THEM AND WHO, GOD'S TRUTH!
WAS GREATEST NOT AS SUFFERER BUT AS FIGHTER. In boundless love as a
Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in
His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders.
How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand
years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before - the fact that it was
for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow
myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I
have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as
did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago - a civilization which
was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.

Then indeed when Rome collapsed there were endless streams of new German bands
flowing into the Empire from the North; but, if Germany collapses today, who is there to
come after us? German blood upon this earth is on the way to gradual exhaustion unless we
pull ourselves together and make ourselves free!

And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the
distress which daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when
I look on my people I see it work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week it

has only for its wage wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these
men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no
Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand
years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people is plundered and exploited.

And through the distress there is no doubt that the people has been aroused. Externally
perhaps apathetic, but within there is ferment. And many may say, 'It is an accursed crime to
stir up passions in the people.' And then I say to myself: Passion is already stirred through the
rising tide of distress, and one day this passion will break out in one way or another: AND
NOW I WOULD ASK THOSE WHO TODAY CALL US AGITATORS': 'WHAT THEN
HAVE YOU TO GIVE TO THE PEOPLE AS A FAITH TO WHICH IT MIGHT CLING?'

Nothing at all, for you yourselves have no faith in your own prescriptions.

That is the mightiest thing which our Movement must create: for these widespread,
seeking and straying masses a new Faith which will not fail them in this hour of confusion, to
which they can pledge themselves, on which they can build so that they may at least find once
again a place which may bring calm to their hearts.

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

July 28, 1922

(jjft is a battle which began nearly 120 years ago, at the moment when the Jew was
^JJ granted citizen rights in the European States. The political emancipation of the Jews
v. was the beginning of an attack of delirium. For thereby they were given full citizen
rights and equality to a people which was much more clearly and definitely a race apart than
all others, that has always formed and will form a State within the State. That did not happen
perhaps at one blow, but it came about as things come about today and always do come about:
first a little finger, then a second and a third, and so bit by bit until at last a people that in the
eighteenth century still appeared completely alien had won equal citizen-rights with
ourselves.

And it was precisely the same in the economic sphere. The vast process of the
industrialization of the peoples meant the confluence of great masses of workmen in the
towns. Thus great hordes of people arose, and these, more's the pity, were not properly dealt
with by those whose moral duty it was to concern themselves for their welfare. Parallel with
this was a gradual 'moneyfication' of the whole of the nation's labor- strength. 'Share-capital'
was in the ascendant, and thus bit by bit the Stock Exchange came to control the whole
national economy.

The directors of these institutions were, and are without exception, Jews. I say 'without
exception,' for the few non-Jews who had a share in them are in the last resort nothing but
screens, shop-window Christians, whom one needs in order, for the sake of the masses, to
keep up the appearance that these institutions were after all founded as a natural outcome of
the needs and the economic life of all peoples alike, and were not, as was the fact, institutions
which correspond only with the essential characteristics of the Jewish people and are the
outcome of those characteristics.

Then Europe stood at the parting of the ways. Europe began to divide into two halves,
into West Europe and Central and Eastern Europe. At first Western Europe took the lead in
the process of industrialization. Especially in England crowds of farm laborers, sons of
farmers, or even ruined farmers themselves, streamed into the towns and there formed a new
fourth estate.

But here one fact is of more importance than we are accustomed to admit: this England,
like France, had relatively few Jews. And the consequence of that was that the great masses,
concentrated in the towns, did not come into immediate contact with this alien nation, and
thus feelings of aversion which must otherwise necessarily have arisen did not find sufficient
nourishment for their development. In the end the fifty or sixty thousand Jews in England -
there was hardly that number in England then - with supreme ease were able so to
Europeanize' themselves that they remained hidden from the primitive eye of the ordinary
member of the public and as 'Captains of Industry,' and especially as representatives of capital
on a large scale, they could appear no longer as foreigners but themselves became
Englishmen.

This accounts for the fact that anti-Semitism in these States could never attain to any
native vigor; for the same is true of France. And precisely for this reason in these countries it

was possible to introduce the system which we have to represent to ourselves under the
concept of 'Democracy.' There it was possible to create a State-form whose meaning could
only be the mastery of the herd over the intelligentsia, the mastery over true energy through
the dead weight of massed numbers. In other words: it must be supremely easy for the Jewish
intelligentsia, small in numbers and therefore completely hidden in the body of the British
people, so to work upon the masses that the latter, quite unconscious of whom they were
obeying, in the end did but serve the purposes of this small stratum of society.

Through the press propaganda, through the use of the organs of information, it was
possible in England to found the great model parties. Already in those early days they saw to
it shrewdly that here were always two or three groups apparently hostile to each other, but in
fact all hanging on a gold thread, the whole designed to take account of a human characteristic
- that the longer a man possesses an object, the more readily he grows tired of it. He craves
something new: therefore one needs two parties. The one is in office, the other in opposition.
When the one has played itself out, then the opposition party comes into power, and the party
which has had its day is now in its turn the opposition. After twenty years the new party itself
has once more played itself out and the game begins afresh. In truth this is a highly ingenious
mill in which the interests of a nation are ground very small. As everyone knows, this system
is given some such name as 'Self-Government of a People.'

Besides this we always find two great catchwords, 'Freedom' and 'Democracy,' used, I
might say, as signboards. 'Freedom': under that term is understood, at least amongst those in
authority who in fact carry on the Government, the possibility of an unchecked plundering of
the masses of the people to which no resistance can be offered. The masses themselves
naturally believe that under the term 'freedom' they possess the right to a quite peculiar
freedom of motion - freedom to move the tongue and to say what they choose, freedom to
move about the streets, etc. A bitter deception!

And the same is true of democracy. In general even in the early days both England and
France had already been bound with the fetters of slavery. With, I might say, a brazen security
these States are fettered with Jewish chains....

In consequence of this widespread aversion it was more difficult for the Jew to spread
infection in the political sphere, and especially so since traditionally loyalty was centered in a
person: the form of the State was a monarchy, and power did not lie with an irresponsible
majority. Thus the Jew saw that here it was possible for an enlightened despotism to arise
based upon the army, the bureaucracy, and the masses of the people still unaffected by the
Jewish poison.

The intelligentsia at that time was almost exclusively German, big business and the new
industries were in German hands, while the last reservoir of a people's strength, the peasantry,
was throughout healthy. In such conditions if, as industry grew, a fourth estate was formed in
the towns, there was the danger that this fourth estate might ally itself with the monarchy, and
thus with its support there might arise a popular monarchy or a popular 'Kaisertum' which
would be ready and willing to give a mortal blow to those powers of international supra-State
finance which were at that time beginning to grow in influence. This was not impossible: in
the history of Germany princes had from time to time found themselves forced, as in
Brandenburg, to turn against the nobility and seek popular support.

But this possibility constituted a grave danger for Jewry. If the great masses of the new
industrialized workmen had come into Nationalist hands and like a true social leaven had
penetrated the whole nation, if the liberation of the different estates had followed step by step
in an organic development and the State had later looked to them for support, then there
would have been created what many hoped for in November, 1918, viz., a national social
State. For Socialism in itself is anything but an international creation. As a noble conception it
has indeed grown up exclusively in Aryan hearts: it owes its intellectual glories only to Aryan
brains. It is entirely alien to the Jew.

The Jew will always be the born champion of private capital in its worst form, that of
unchecked exploitation.... Voltaire, as well as Rousseau, together with our German Fichte and
many another - they are all without exception united in their recognition that the Jew is not
only a foreign element differing in his essential character, which is utterly harmful to the
nature of the Aryan, but that the Jewish people in itself stands against us as our deadly foe and
so will stand against us always and for all time.

The master-stroke of the Jew was to claim the leadership of the fourth estate: he
founded the Movement both of the Social Democrats and the Communists. His policy was
twofold: he had his 'apostles' in both political camps. Amongst the parties of the Right he
encouraged those features which were most repugnant to the people - the passion for money,
unscrupulous methods in trade which were employed so ruthlessly as to give rise to the
proverb 'Business, too, marches over corpses.' And the Jew attacked the parties of the Right.
Jews wormed their way into the families of the upper classes: it was from the Jews that the
latter took their wives. The result was that in a short time it was precisely the ruling class
which became in its character completely estranged from its own people.

And this fact gave the Jew his opportunity with the parties of the Left. Here he played
the part of the common demagogue. Two means enabled him to drive away in disgust the
whole intelligentsia of the nation from the leadership of the workers. First: his international
attitude, for the native intelligence of the country is prepared to make sacrifices, it will do
anything for the life of the people, but it cannot believe in the mad view that through the
denial of that national life, through a refusal to defend the rights of one's own people, through
the breaking down of the national resistance to the foreigner, it is possible to raise up a people
and make it happy. That it cannot do, and so it remained at a distance.

And the Jew's second instrument was the Marxist theory in and for itself. For directly
one went on to assert that property as such is theft, directly one deserted the obvious formula
that only the natural wealth of a country can and should be common property, but that that
which a man creates or gains through his honest labor is his own, immediately the economic
intelligentsia with its nationalist outlook could, here too, no longer co-operate: for this
intelligentsia was bound to say to itself that this theory meant the collapse of any human
civilization whatever. Thus the Jew succeeded in isolating this new movement of the workers
from all the nationalist elements....

More and more so to influence the masses that he persuaded those of the Right that the
faults of the Left were the faults of the German workman, and similarly he made it appear to
those of the Left that the faults of the Right were simply the faults of the so-called 'Bourgeois,'
and neither side noticed that on both sides the faults were the result of a scheme planned by
alien devilish agitators. And only so is it possible to explain how this dirty joke of world

history could come to be that Stock Exchange Jews should become the leaders of a Workers
Movement. It is a gigantic fraud: world history has seldom seen its like.

And then we must ask ourselves: what are the final aims of this development?

So soon as millions of men have had it hammered into them that they are so oppressed
and enslaved that it matters not what their personal attitude may be to their people, their State,
or economic life, then a kind of passive resistance must result, which sooner or later will do
fatal damage to the national economy. Through the preaching of the Marxist economic theory
the national economy must go to ruin. We see the results in Russia: the end of the whole
economic life of the State: the handing over of the community to the international world of
finance. And the process is furthered through the organization of the 'political strike.' Often
there are no adequate economic grounds for a strike, but there are always political grounds
and plenty of them.

And to this must be added the practical political sabotage of the State, since the thought
of the individual is concentrated on the idea of international solidarity. It is clear that a
nation's economic life depends upon the strength of a national State: it does not live on such
phrases as Appeasement of the peoples' or 'Freedom of the Peoples.'

At the moment when no people supports the economic life of a nation, ready to give it
its protection, at that moment economic life collapses. The breaking in pieces of a nation's
strength is the end of a nation's prosperity, the national existence must cease altogether.

And one can see constantly how wonderfully the Stock Exchange Jew and the leader of
the workers, how the Stock Exchange organ and the journal of the workers, co-operate. They
both pursue one common policy and a single aim. Moses Kohn on the one side encourages his
association to refuse the workers' demands, while his brother Isaac in the factory incites the
masses and shouts, 'Look at them! they only want to oppress you! Shake off your fetters....'

His brother takes care that the fetters are well and truly forged. The Stock Exchange
organ seeks without intermission to encourage fevered speculation and unparalleled corners in
grain and in the food of the people, while the workmen's newspaper lets off all its guns on the
masses, telling them that bread is dearer and this, that, and the other is dearer: up Proletarians!
endure it no longer-down with . . .

How long can this process last? It means the utter destruction not only of economic life,
but of the people. It is clear that all these apostles who talk their tongues out of their heads,
but who spend the night in the Hotel Excelsior, travel in express trains, and spend their leave
for their health in Nice - these people do not exert their energies for love of the people. No,
the people is not to profit, it shall merely be brought into dependence on these men. The
backbone of its independence, its own economic life, is to be destroyed, that it may the more
surely relapse into the golden fetters of the perpetual interest-slavery of the Jewish race. And
this process will end when suddenly out of the masses someone arises who seizes the
leadership, finds other comrades and fans into flame the passions which have been held in
check and looses them against the deceivers.

That is the lurking danger, and the Jew can meet it in one way only - by destroying the
hostile national intelligentsia. That is the inevitable ultimate goal of the Jew in his revolution.
And this aim he must pursue; he knows well enough his economics brings no blessing: his is

no master people: he is an exploiter: the Jews are a people of robbers. He has never founded
any civilization, though he has destroyed civilizations by the hundred. He possesses nothing
of his own creation to which he can point.

Everything that he has is stolen. Foreign peoples, foreign workmen build him his
temples, it is foreigners who create and work for him: it is foreigners who shed their blood for
him. He knows no 'people's army': he has only hired mercenaries who are ready to go to death
on his behalf. He has no art of his own: bit by bit he has stolen it all from the other peoples or
has watched them at work and then made his copy. He does not even know how merely to
preserve the precious things which others have created: as he turns the treasures over in his
hand they are transformed into dirt and dung. He knows that he cannot maintain any State for
long. That is one of the differences between him and the Aryan. True, the Aryan also has
dominated other peoples. But how? He entered on the land, he cleared the forests; out of
wildernesses he has created civilizations, and he has not used the others for his own interests,
he has, so far as their capacities permitted, incorporated them into his State and through him
art and science were brought to flower. In the last resort it was the Aryan and the Aryan alone
who could form States and could set them on their path to future greatness.

All that the Jew cannot do. And because he cannot do it, therefore all his revolutions
must be 'international.' They must spread as a pestilence spreads. He can build no State and
say 'See here, Here stands the State, a model for all. Now copy us!' He must take care that the
plague does not die, that it is not limited to one place, or else in a short time this plague-hearth
would burn itself out. So he is forced to bring every mortal thing to an international
expansion. For how long? Until the whole world sinks in ruins and brings him down with it in
the midst of the ruins.

That process today in Russia is practically complete. The whole of present-day Russia
has nothing to show beyond a ruined civilization, a colony ripe for development through alien
capital, and even this capital in order to supply resources in labor for its practical work must
introduce Aryan intellects, since for this again the Jew is useless. Here, too, he is all rapacity,
never satisfied. He knows no ordered economy, he knows no ordered body of administrators.
Over there in Russia he is laying his hands on everything. They take the noble's diamonds to
help 'the People.' The diamonds then stray into foreign societies and are no more seen. He
seizes to himself the treasures of the churches, but not to feed the people: oh no! Everything
wanders away and leaves not a trace behind. In his greed he has become quite senseless: he
can keep hold of nothing: he has only within him the instinct for destruction, and so he
himself collapses with the treasure that he has destroyed.

It is a tragic fate: we have often grown excited over the death of a criminal: if an
anarchist is shot in Spain we raise a mighty howl over 'the sacrifice of valuable human blood' .
. . and here in the East thirty million human beings are being slowly martyred - done to death,
some on the scaffold, some by machine guns . . . millions upon millions through starvation....
A whole people is dying, and now we can perhaps understand how it was possible that
formerly all the civilizations of Mesopotamia disappeared without a trace so that one can only
with difficulty find in the desert sand the remains of these cities. We see how in our own day
whole countries die out under this scourge of God, and we see how this scourge is threatening
Germany, too, and how with us our own people in mad infatuation is contributing to bring
upon itself the same yoke, the same misery.

We know that the Revolution which began in 1918 has covered perhaps but the first
third of its course. Two things, however, there are which must scourge it forward upon its
way: economic causes and political causes. On the economic side, the ever-growing distress,
and in the political sphere, are not nearly all Germans in their hearts - let each one admit it - in
despair when they consider the situation which leaves us quite defenseless in face of a Europe
which is so hostile to Germany? AND WHY IS EUROPE HOSTILE? WE SEE HOW OVER
THERE IN THIS OTHER EUROPE IT IS NOT THE PEOPLES WHICH AGITATE
AGAINST US, IT IS THE SECRET POWER OF THE ORGANIZED PRESS WHICH
CEASELESSLY POURS NEW POISON INTO THE HEARTS OF THESE PEOPLES.

And who are then these bandits of the press? The brothers and the relatives of the
publishers of our own newspapers. And the capital source which provides the energy which
here - and there - drives them forward is the Jewish dream of World Supremacy.

Today the idea of international solidarity has lost its force, one can still bring men out of
the factories, but only by means of terrorism. If you ask for an honest answer the worker will
confess that he no longer believes in this international solidarity. And the belief in the so-
called reasonableness of the other peoples has gone too. How often have we been told that
reason will lead them not to be too hard with us: true, reason should have moved them thus,
but what did move them had nothing to do with reason. For here there is no question of the
thought of reasonable peoples: it is the thought of a wild beast, tearing, raging in its unreason,
that drives all of them to the same ruin as that to which we ourselves are driven.

So the masses of the people in Germany are becoming, in the political sphere,
completely lost. Yet here and there people are beginning to get some practice in criticism.
Slowly, cautiously, and yet with a certain accuracy the finger is being placed on the real
wound of our people. And thus one comes to realize: if only this development goes on for a
time, it might be possible that from Germany the light should come which is destined to light
both Germany and the world to their salvation. And at that point the everlasting lie begins to
work against us with every means in its power....

It is said, if one criticizes the state of affairs to which we have been brought today, that
one is a reactionary, a monarchist, a pan-German. I ask you what would probably have been
the state of Germany today if during these three years there had been no criticism at all? I
believe that in fact there has been far, far too little criticism. OUR PEOPLE
UNFORTUNATELY IS MUCH TOO UNCRITICAL, OR OTHERWISE IT WOULD
LONG AGO HAVE NOT ONLY SEEN THROUGH MANY THINGS, BUT WOULD
HAVE SWEPT THEM AWAY WITH ITS FIST! The crisis is developing towards its
culmination. The day is not far distant when, for the reasons which I have stated, the German
Revolution must be carried forward another step. The leaders know all too well that things
cannot always go on as they are going today. One may raise prices ten times by 100 per cent,
but it is doubtful if in the end even a German will accept a milliard of marks for his day's
wage if in the last resort with his milliard-wage he must still starve. It is a question whether
one will be able to keep up this great fraud upon the nation. There will come a day when this
must stop - and therefore one must build for that day, before it comes.

And so now Germany is reaching that stage which Russia has drunk to the lees. Now in
one last stupendous assault they will finally crush all criticism, all opposition, no, rather
whatever honesty is still left to us, and that they will do the more rapidly the more clearly they
see that the masses are beginning to understand one thing - National Socialist teaching.

Whether for the moment it comes to them under that name or under another, the fact is
that everywhere more and more it is making headway. Today all these folk cannot yet belong
to a single party, but, wherever you go, in Germany, yes almost in the whole world, you find
already millions of thinking men who know that a State can be built only on a social
foundation and they know also that the deadly foe of every social conception is the
international Jew.

Every truly national idea is in the last resort social, i.e., he who is prepared so
completely to adopt the cause of his people that he really knows no higher ideal than the
prosperity of this - his own - people, he who has so taken to heart the meaning of our great
song 'Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles,' that nothing in this world stands for him higher
than this Germany, people and land, land and people, he is a Socialist! And he who in this
people sympathizes with the poorest of its citizens, who in this people sees in every individual
a valuable member of the whole community, and who recognizes that this community can
flourish only when it is formed not of rulers and oppressed but when all according to their
capacities fulfill their duty to their Fatherland and the community of the people and are valued
accordingly, he who seeks to preserve the native vigor, the strength, and the youthful energy
of the millions of working men, and who above all is concerned that our precious possession,
our youth, should not before its time be used up in unhealthy harmful work - he is not merely
a Socialist, but he is also National in the highest sense of that word.

It is the teaching of these facts which appears to the Jews as leaders of the Revolution
today to constitute a threatening danger. And it is precisely this which more than anything
else makes the Jew wish to get in his blow as soon as possible. For one thing he knows quite
well: in the last resort there is only one danger which he has to fear-and that danger is this
young Movement.

He knows the old parties. They are easily satisfied. Only endow them with a few seats
as ministers or with similar posts and they are ready to go along with you. And in especial he
knows one thing: they are so innocently stupid. In their case the truth of the old saying is
proved afresh every day: 'Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first strike with
blindness.' They have been struck with blindness: therefore it follows that the gods wish to
destroy them. Only look at these parties and their leaders, Stresemann and the rest of them.
They are indeed not dangerous. They never go to the roots of the evil: they all still think that
with forbearance, with humanity, with accommodation they can fight a battle which has not
its equal in this world. Through gentleness they think that they must demonstrate to the enemy
of the Left that they are ready for appeasement so as to stay the deadly cancerous ulcer
through a policy of moderation.

No! A thousand times No! Here there are only two possibilities: either victory or defeat!

What today is the meaning of these great preparations for the decisive battle on the part
of bolshevist Judaism?-

To make the nation defenseless in arms and to make the people defenseless in spirit.

Two great aims!

Abroad Germany is already humiliated. The State trembles before every French Negro-
captain, the nation is no longer dangerous. And within Germany they have seen to it that arms
should be taken away from the decent elements of the people and that in their stead Russian-
Jewish-bolshevist bands should be armed. Only one thing remains still to do: viz., the
muzzling of the spirit, above all the arrest of the evil 'agitators' - that is the name they give to
those who dare to tell the people the truth. Not only are their organizations to be known to all,
but the masses are to be incited against their persons. Just as the Jew could once incite the
mob of Jerusalem against Christ, so today he must succeed in inciting folk who have been
duped into madness to attack those who, God's truth! seek to deal with this people in utter
honesty and sincerity. And so he begins to intimidate them, and he knows that this pressure in
itself is enough to shut the mouths of hundreds, yes, of thousands. For they think, if I only
hold my tongue, then I shall be safe in case they come into power. No, my friend. The only
difference will be that I may hang perhaps still talking, while you will hang - in silence. Here,
too, Russia can give us countless examples, and with us it will be the same story.

We know that the so-called 'Law for the Protection of the Republic' which comes from
Berlin today is nothing else than a means for reducing all criticism to silence. We know, too,
that no effort will be spared so that the last outstanding personalities - those who within
Germany foresee the coming of disaster - shall in good time disappear. And to that end the
population of North Germany will be scourged into opposition to Bavaria with every lie and
every misrepresentation that comes to hand. Up there they have the feeling that in one corner
of the Reich the spirit of the German people is not yet broken. And that is the point to which
we National Socialists have to grapple ourselves. We National Socialists are, God's truth!
perhaps the most loyal, the most devoted of all men to our German Fatherland. For three years
we have waged a war, often against death and devil, but always only for our German
Fatherland. We got so far that at the last, as crown of all our labors, we had to land in prison.
But in spite of everything there is one thing we would say: We do make a distinction between
a Government and the German Fatherland. When today here in the Landtag or in the
Reichstag at Berlin some lousy half -Asiatic youth casts in our teeth the charge that we have
no loyalty to the Reich, I beg you do not distress yourselves. The Bavarian people has sealed
its loyalty to the Reich with its countless regiments which fought for the Reich and often sank
under the earth two or three times. We are convinced, and that in the last resort is our one
great faith, that out of this bitterest distress and this utter misery the German Reich will rise
again, but not as now, not as the offspring of wretchedness and misery - we shall possess once
again a true German Reich of freedom and of honor, a real Fatherland of the whole German
people and not an asylum for alien swindlers. There is today constant talk about 'Federalism,'
etc. I beg you not to abuse the Prussians while at the same time you grovel before the Jews,
but show yourselves stiff-necked against the folk of Berlin. And if you do that, then you will
have on your side in the whole of Germany millions and millions of Germans, whether they
be Prussians or men of Baden, Wurttembergers, men of Saxony, or Germans of Austria. Now
is the hour to stand stiff-necked and resist to the last!

We National Socialists who for three years have done nothing but preach - abused and
insulted by all, by some mocked and scorned, by others traduced and slandered - we cannot
retreat! For us there is only one path which leads straight ahead. We know that the fight which
now is blazing will be a hard struggle. It will not be fought out in the court of the Reich at
Leipzig, it will not be fought out in a cabinet at Berlin, it will be fought out through those
factors which in their hard reality have ever up to the present time made world history. I heard
recently in the speech of a minister that the rights of a State cannot be set aside through
simple majority decisions, but only through treaties. BISMARCK ONCE USED DIFFERENT

LANGUAGE ON THIS SUBJECT: HE THOUGHT THAT THE DESTINIES OF PEOPLES
COULD BE DETERMINED NEITHER THROUGH MAJORITY DECISIONS NOR
THROUGH TREATIES, BUT ONLY THROUGH BLOOD AND IRON.

On one point there should be no doubt: we will not let the Jews slit our gullets and not
defend ourselves. Today in Berlin they may already be arranging their festival-dinners with
the Jewish hangmen of Soviet Russia - that they will never do here. They may today begin to
set up the Cheka - the Extraordinary Commission - in Germany, they may give it free scope,
we surrender to such a Jewish Commission never! We have the conviction, firm as a rock,
that, if in this State seven million men are determined to stand by their 'No' to the very last,
the evil specter will collapse into nothingness in the rest of the Reich. For what Germany
needs today, what Germany longs for ardently, is a symbol of power, and strength.

So as I come to the end of my speech I want to ask something of those among you who
are young. And for that there is a very special reason. The old parties train their youth in the
gift of the gab, we prefer to train them to use their bodily strength. For I tell you: the young
man who does not find his way to the place where in the last resort the destiny of his people is
most truly represented, only studies philosophy and in a time like this buries himself behind
his books or sits at home by the fire, he is no German youth! I call upon you! Join our Storm
Divisions! And however many insults and slanders you may hear if you do join, you all know
that the Storm Divisions have been formed for our protection, for your protection, and at the
same time not merely for the protection of the Movement, but for the protection of a Germany
that is to be. If you are reviled and insulted, good luck to you, my boys! You have the good
fortune already at eighteen or nineteen years of age to be hated by the greatest of scoundrels.
What others can win only after a lifetime of toil, this highest gift of distinguishing between
the honest man and the brigand, falls as a piece of luck into your lap while you are but youths.
You can be assured that the more they revile you, the more we respect you. We know that if
you were not there, none of us would make another speech. We know, we see clearly that our
Movement would be cudgelled down if you did not protect it! You are the defense of a
Movement that is called one day to remodel Germany in revolutionary fashion from its very
foundations in order that there may come to birth what perhaps so many expected on the ninth
of November: a German Reich and a Germanic and, so far as in us lies, a German Republic.

Every battle must be fought to the end - better that it come early than late. And he ever
stands most securely who from the first goes to the fight with the greatest confidence. And
this highest confidence we can carry with us in our hearts. For he who on our side is today the
leader of the German people, God's truth! he has nothing to win but perhaps only everything
to lose. He who today fights on our side cannot win great laurels, far less can he win great
material goods - it is more likely that he will end up in jail. He who today is leader must be an
idealist, if only for the reason that he leads those against whom it would seem that everything
has conspired.

But in that very fact there lies an inexhaustible source of strength. The conviction that
our Movement is not sustained by money or the lust for gold, but only by our love for the
people, that must ever give us fresh heart, that must ever fill us with courage for the fray.

And as my last word, take with you this assurance: if this battle should not come, never
would Germany win peace. Germany would decay and at the best would sink to ruin like a
rotting corpse. But that is not our destiny. We do not believe that this misfortune which today
our God sends over Germany has no meaning: it is surely the scourge which should and shall

drive us to a new greatness, to a new power and glory, to a Germany which for the first time
shall fulfill that which in their hearts millions of the best of our fellow countrymen have
hoped for through the centuries and the millennia, to the Germany of the German people!

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

September 18, 1922

[excerpt]

(jTf^conomics is a secondary matter. World history teaches us that no people became
iJJ great through economics: it was economics that brought them to their ruin. A
C- people died when its race was disintegrated. Germany, too, did not become great
through economics.

A people that in its own life [volkisch] has lost honor becomes politically defenseless,
and then becomes enslaved also in the economic sphere.

Internationalization today means only Judaization. We in Germany have come to this:
that a sixty-million people sees its destiny to lie at the will of a few dozen Jewish bankers.
This was possible only because our civilization had first been Judaized. The undermining of
the German conception of personality by catchwords had begun long before. Ideas such as
'Democracy,' 'Majority,' 'Conscience of the World,' World Solidarity,' World Peace,'
Tnternationality of Art,' etc., disintegrate our race-consciousness, breed cowardice, and so
today we are bound to say that the simple Turk is more man than we are.

No salvation is possible until the bearer of disunion, the Jew, has been rendered
powerless to harm.

1. We must call to account the November criminals of 1918. It cannot be that two
million Germans should have fallen in vain and that afterwards one should sit down as friends
at the same table with traitors. No, we do not pardon, we demand - Vengeance!

2. The dishonoring of the nation must cease. For betrayers of their Fatherland and
informers the gallows is the proper place. Our streets and squares shall once more bear the
names of our heroes; they shall not be named after Jews. In the Question of Guilt we must
proclaim the truth.

3. The administration of the State must be cleared of the rabble which is fattened at the
stall of the parties.

4. The present laxity in the fight against usury must be abandoned. Here the fitting
punishment is the same as that for the betrayers of their Fatherland.

5. WE MUST DEMAND A GREAT ENLIGHTENMENT ON THE SUBJECT OF
THE PEACE TREATY. WITH THOUGHTS OF LOVE? NO! BUT IN HOLY HATRED
AGAINST THOSE WHO HAVE RUINED US.

6. The lies which would veil from us our misfortunes must cease. The fraud of the
present money-madness must be shown up. That will stiffen the necks of us all.

7. AS FOUNDATION FOR A NEW CURRENCY THE PROPERTY OF THOSE
WHO ARE NOT OF OUR BLOOD MUST DO SERVICE. If families who have lived in

Germany for a thousand years are now expropriated, we must do the same to the Jewish
usurers.

8. WE DEMAND IMMEDIATE EXPULSION OF ALL JEWS WHO HAVE
ENTERED GERMANY SINCE 1914, and of all those, too, who through trickery on the
Stock Exchange or through other shady transactions have gained their wealth.

9. The housing scarcity must be relieved through energetic action; houses must be
granted to those who deserve them. Eisner said in 1918 that we had no right to demand the
return of our prisoners - he was only saying openly what all Jews were thinking. People who
so think must feel how life tastes in a concentration camp!

Extremes must be fought by extremes. Against the infection of materialism, against the
Jewish pestilence we must hold aloft a flaming ideal. And if others speak of the World and
Humanity we say the Fatherland - and only the Fatherland!

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

April 10, 1923

[excerpt]

(j¥ n the Bible we find the text, 'That which is neither hot nor cold will I spew out of
,JJ my mouth.' This utterance of the great Nazarene has kept its profound validity until
V the present day. He who would pursue the golden mean must surrender the hope of

achieving the great and the greatest aims. Until the present day the half-hearted and the

lukewarm have remained the curse of Germany...

To the half-heartedness and weakness of the parties in Parliament was added the half-
heartedness of Governments... Everything stood under the sign of half-heartedness and Luke
warmness, even the fight for existence in the World War and still more the conclusion of
peace. And now the continuation of the half-hearted policy of those days holds the field. The
people, inwardly united in the hard struggle-in the trenches there were neither parties nor
Confessions-has been torn asunder through the economics of profiteers and knaves.
Appeasement and the settlement of differences would certainly soon be there if only one were
to hang the whole crew. But profiteers and knaves are, of course, 'Citizens of the State,' and
what is more important still; they are adherents of the religion, which is hallowed by the
Talmud.

EVEN TODAY WE ARE THE LEAST LOVED PEOPLE ON EARTH. A world of
foes is ranged against us and the German must still today make up his mind whether he
intends to be a free solder or a white slave. THE ONLY POSSIBLE CONDITIONS UNDER
WHICH A GERMAN STATE CAN DEVELOP AT ALL MUST THEREFORE BE:THE
UNIFICATION OF ALL GERMANS IN EUROPE, education towards a national
consciousness, and readiness to place the whole national strength without exception in the
service of the nation.

NO ECONOMIC POLICY IS POSSIBLE WITHOUT A SWORD, no industrialization
without power. Today we have no longer any sword grasped in our fist-how can we have a
successful economic policy? England has fully recognized this primary maxim in the healthy
life of State; for centuries England has acted on the principle of converting economics
strength into political power, while conversely political power in its turn must protect
economic life. The instinct of self-preservation can build up economics, but we sought to
preserve World Peace instead of the interests of the nation, instead of defending the economic
life of the nation with the sword and of ruthlessly championing those conditions, which were
essential for the life of the people.

Three years ago I declared in this same room that the collapse of the German national
consciousness must carry with it into the abyss the economic life of Germany as well. For
liberation something more is necessary than an economic life policy, something more than
industry: IF A PEOPLE IS TO BECOME FREE IT NEEDS PRIDE AND WILLPOWER,
DEFIANCE, HATE, HATE, AND ONCE AGAIN HATE...

The spirit comes not down from above, that spirit which is to purify Germany, which
with its iron besom is to purify the great sty of democracy. To do that is the task of our

Movement. The Movement must not rust away in Parliament, it must not spend itself in
superfluous battles of words, but the banner with the white circle and the black Swastika will
be hoisted over the whole of Germany on the day which shall mark the liberation of our whole
people.

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

April 13, 1923

[excerpt]

(jifn our view, the times when there was no 'League of Nations' were far more
,JJ honourable and more humane.... We ask: 'Must there be wars?' The pacifist answers
v. 'No!' He proceeds to explain that disputes in the life of peoples are only the
expression of the fact that a class has been oppressed by the ruling bourgeoisie. When there
are in fact differences of opinion between peoples, then these should be brought before a
'Peace Court' for its decision. But he does not answer the question whether the judges of this
court of arbitration would have the power to bring the parties before the bar of the court. I
believe that an accused ordinarily only appears 'voluntarily' before a court because, if he did
not, he would be fetched there.

I should like to see the nation which would allow itself to be brought before this League
of Nations Court in the case of a disagreement without external force. In the life of nations,
what in the last resort decides questions is a kind of Judgment Court of God. It may even
happen that in case of a dispute between two peoples - both may be in the right. Thus Austria,
a people of fifty millions, had most certainly the right to an outlet to the sea. But since in the
strip of territory in question the Italian element of the population was in the majority, Italy
claimed for herself the 'right of self-determination.' Who yields voluntarily? No one! So the
strength which each people possesses decides the day. ALWAYS BEFORE GOD AND THE
WORLD THE STRONGER HAS THE RIGHT TO CARRY THROUGH WHAT HE
WILLS.

History proves: He who has not the strength - him the 'right in itself profits not a whit.
A world court without a world police would be a joke. And from what nations of the present
League of Nations would then this force be recruited? Perhaps from the ranks of the old
German Army? THE WHOLE WORLD OF NATURE IS A MIGHTY STRUGGLE
BETWEEN STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS - AN ETERNAL VICTORY OF THE
STRONG OVER THE WEAK. There would be nothing but decay in the whole of Nature if
this were not so. States which should offend against the elementary law would fall into decay.
You need not seek for long to find an example of such mortal decay: you can see it in the
Reich of today....

. . . Before the war two States, Germany and France, had to live side by side but only
under arms. It is true that the War of 1870-1 meant for Germany the close of an enmity which
had endured for centuries, but in France a passionate hatred against Germany was fostered by
every means by propaganda in the press, in school textbooks, in theaters, in the cinemas. . . .
All the Jewish papers throughout France agitated against Berlin. Here again to seek and to
exploit grounds for a conflict is the clearly recognizable effort of world Jewry.

The conflict of interests between Germany and England lay in the economic sphere. Up
till 1850 England's position as a World Power was undisputed. British engineers, British trade
conquer the world. Germany, owing to greater industry and increased capacity, begins to be a
dangerous rival. In a short time those firms which in Germany were in English hands pass into

the possession of German industrialists. German industry expands vastly and the products of
that industry even in the London market drive out British goods.

The protective measure, the stamp 'Made in Germany,' has the opposite effect from that
desired: this 'protective stamp' becomes a highly effective advertisement. The German
economic success was not created in Essen alone but by a man who knew that behind
economics must stand power, for power alone makes an economic position secure. This
power was born upon the battlefields of 1870-71, not in the atmosphere of parliamentary
chatter. Forty thousand dead have rendered possible the life of forty millions. When England,
in the face of such a Germany as this, threatened to be brought to her knees, then she
bethought herself of the last weapon in the armoury of international rivalry - violence. A press
propaganda on an imposing scale was started as a preparatory measure.

But who is the chief of the whole British press concerned with world trade? One name
crystallizes itself out of the rest: Northcliffe - a Jew! ... A campaign of provocation is carried
on with assertions, libels, and promises such as only a Jew can devise, such as only Jewish
newspapers would have the effrontery to put before an Aryan people. And then at last 1914:
they egg people on: Ah, poor violated Belgium! Up! To the rescue of the small nations - for
the honor of humanity!' The same lies, the same provocation throughout the entire world! And
the success of that provocation the German people can trace grievously enough!

WHAT CAUSE FINALLY HAD AMERICA TO ENTER THE WAR AGAINST
GERMANY? WITH THE OUTBREAK OF THE WORLD WAR, WHICH JUDAH HAD
DESIRED SO PASSIONATELY AND SO LONG, ALL THE LARGE

JEWISH FIRMS OF THE UNITED STATES BEGAN SUPPLYING
AMMUNITIONS. They supplied the European 'war-market' to an extent which perhaps even
they themselves had never dreamed of - a gigantic harvest! Yet nothing satisfied the insatiable
greed of the Jew. And so the venal press which depended upon the Stock Exchange kings
began an unparalleled propaganda campaign. A GIGANTIC ORGANIZATION FOR
NEWSPAPER LYING WAS BUILT UP. AND ONCE MORE IT IS A JEWISH CONCERN,
THE HEARST PRESS, WHICH SET THE TONE OF THE AGITATION AGAINST
GERMANY.

The hatred of these Americans' was not directed solely against commercial Germany or
against military Germany. It was directed specially against social Germany, because this
Germany had up to that time kept itself outside of the principles which governed the world
trusts. The old Reich had at least made an honourable attempt to be socially-minded. We had
to show for ourselves such an initiative in social institutions as no other country in the wide
world could boast. . . . This explains why, even in Germany itself, the 'comrades' under Jewish
leadership fought against their own vital interests. This explains the agitation carried on
throughout the world under the same watchword.

For this reason the Jewish-democratic press of America had to accomplish its
masterpiece - that is to say, it had to drive into the most horrible of all wars a great peace-
loving people which was as little concerned in European struggles as it was in the North Pole:
America was to intervene 'in defense of civilization,' and the Americans were persuaded so to
do by an atrocity propaganda conducted in the name of civilization which from A to Z was a
scandalous invention the like of which has never yet been seen - a farrago of lies and
forgeries. Because this last State in the world where social aims were being realized had to be

destroyed, therefore twenty-six peoples were incited one against the other by this press which
is exclusively in the possession of one and the same world people, of one and the same race,
and that race on principle the deadly foe of all national States.

Who could have prevented the World War? Not the Kul- tursolidaritat, the 'solidarity of
civilization,' in whose name the Jews carried on their propaganda: not the so-called World
Pacifism - again an exclusively Jewish invention. Could the so-called 'Solidarity of the
Proletariat?' . . . All the wheels stand silent, still, If that be your strong arm's will.... The
German wheel on November 9, 1918, was indeed brought to a standstill. The Social
Democratic party in its principal organ, Vorwarts, declared in so many words that it was not
in the interest of the workers that Germany should win the war. . .

Could the Freemasons perhaps stop the war? - this most noble of philanthropic
institutions who foretold the good fortune of the people louder than anyone and who at the
same time was the principal leader in promoting the war. Who, after all, are the Freemasons?
You have to distinguish two grades. To the lower grade in Germany belong the ordinary
citizens who through the claptrap which is served up to them can feel themselves to be
'somebody's,' but the responsible authorities are those many-sided folk who can stand any
climate, those 300 Rathenaus who all know each other, who guide the history of the world
over the heads of Kings and Presidents, those who will undertake any office without scruples,
who know how brutally to enslave all peoples - once more the Jews!

Why have the Jews been against Germany? That is made quite clear today - proved by
countless facts. They use the age-old tactics of the hyena - when fighters are tired out, then go
for them! Then make your harvest! In war and revolutions the Jew attained the unattainable.
Hundreds of thousands of escaped Orientals become modern 'Europeans.' Times of unrest
produce miracles. Before 1914 how long would it have taken, for instance, in Bavaria before a
Galician Jew became - Prime Minister? - Or in Russia before an anarchist from the New York
Ghetto, Bronstein (Trotsky), became - Dictator? Only a few wars and revolutions - that was
enough to put the Jewish people into possession of the red gold and thereby to make them
masters of the world.

Before 1914 there were two States above all, Germany and Russia, which prevented the
Jew from reaching his goal - the mastery of the world. Here not everything which they already
possessed in the Western democracies had fallen to the Jews. Here they were not the sole
lords alike in the intellectual and economic life. Here, too, the Parliaments were not yet
exclusively instruments of Jewish capital and of the will of the Jew. The German and the
genuine Russian had still preserved a certain aloofness from the Jew. In both peoples there
still lived the healthy instinct of scorn for the Jew, and there was a real danger that in these
monarchies there might one day arise a Frederick the Great, a William I, and that democracy
and a parliamentary regime might be sent to the devil.

So the Jews became revolutionaries! The Republic should bring them to wealth and to
power. This aim they disguised: they cried 'Down with the monarchies!' 'Enthrone the
sovereign people!' I do not know whether today one could venture to call the German or the
Russian people 'sovereign.' At least one cannot see any trace of it! What the German people
can trace, however, what every day stands in the most crass form before its eyes, is
debauchery, gluttony, speculation ruling unchecked, the open mockery of the Jew....

So Russia and Germany had to be overthrown in order that the ancient prophecy might
be fulfilled. So the whole world was lashed into fury. So every lie and propaganda agency
was brutally set in action against the State of the last - the German - idealists ! AND THUS IT
WAS THAT JUDAH WON THE WORLD WAR. OR WOULD YOU WISH TO
MAINTAIN THAT THE FRENCH, THE ENGLISH, OR THE AMERICAN 'PEOPLE'
WON THE WAR? THEY, ONE AND ALL, VICTORS AND VANQUISHED ARE ALIKE
DEFEATED: one thing raises itself above them all: the World Stock Exchange which has
become the master of the people.

WHAT GUILT HAD GERMANY HERSELF FOR THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR?
HER GUILT CONSISTED IN THIS: THAT AT THE MOMENT WHEN THE RING
CLOSED ABOUT HER EXISTENCE GERMANY NEGLECTED TO ORGANIZE HER
DEFENSE WITH SUCH VIGOR THAT THROUGH THIS DEMONSTRATION OF HER
POWER EITHER THE OTHERS, DESPITE THEIR ABOMINABLE PURPOSES, WOULD
HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THEIR WILL TO STRIKE, OR ELSE THE VICTORY OF
THE REICH WOULD HAVE BEEN ASSURED.

The guilt of the German people lies in this: that when in 1912 a criminal Reichstag in its
unfathomable baseness and folly had refused to allow the raising of three army corps the
people did not create for itself those army corps in the Reichstag's despite. With these
additional 120,000 men the Battle of the Marne would have been won and the issue of the war
decided. Two million fewer German heroes would have sunk into their graves. Who was it
who in 1912 as in 1918 struck its weapons from the hands of the German people? Who was it
that in 1912, as in the last year of the war, infatuated the German people with his theory that if
Germany throws down her arms the whole world will follow her example - who? - the
democratic-Marxist Jew, who at the same hour incited and still today incites the others to arm
and to subjugate 'barbarous' Germany.

But someone may perhaps yet raise the question whether it is expedient today to talk
about the guilt for the war. Most assuredly we have the duty to talk about it! For the
murderers of our Fatherland who all the years through have betrayed and sold Germany, they
are the same men who, as the November criminals, have plunged us into the depths of
misfortune. We have the duty to speak since in the near future, when we have gained power,
we shall have the further duty of taking these creators of ruin, these clouts, these traitors to
their State and of hanging them on the gallows to which they belong. Only let no one think
that in them there has come a change of heart. On the contrary, these November scoundrels
who still are free to go as they will in our midst, they are, even today, going against us. From
the recognition of the facts comes the will to rise again. Two millions have remained on the
field of battle. They, too, have their rights and not we, the survivors, alone. There are millions
of orphans, of cripples, of widows in our midst. They, too, have rights. For the Germany of
today not one of them died, not one of them became a cripple, an orphan, or a widow. We
owe it to these millions that we build a new Germany!

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

April 24, 1923

[excerpt]

(jif reject the word 'Proletariat.' The Jew who coined the word meant by 'Proletariat,'
,JJ not the oppressed, but those who work with their hands. And those who work with
v. their intellects are stigmatized bluntly as 'Bourgeois.' It is not the character of a
man's life which forms the basis of this classification, it is simply the occupation - whether a
man works with his brain or with his body. And in this turbulent mass of the hand-workers the
Jew recognized a new power which might perhaps be his instrument for the gaining of that
which is his ultimate goal: World supremacy, the destruction of the national States.

And while the Jew 'organizes' these masses, he organizes business, too, at the same
time. Business was depersonalized, i.e., Judaized. Business lost the Aryan character of work:
it became an object of speculation. Master and man were torn asunder . . . and he who created
this class division was the same person who led the masses in their opposition to this class
division, led them not against his Jewish brethren, but against the last remnants of
independent national economic life.

And these remnants, the bourgeoisie which also was already Judaized, resisted the great
masses who were knocking at the door and demanding better conditions of life. And so the
Jewish leaders succeeded in hammering into the minds of the masses the Marxist propaganda:
'Your deadly foe is the bourgeoisie; if he were not there, you would be free.' If it had not been
for the boundless blindness and stupidity of our bourgeoisie the Jew would never have
become the leader of the German working-classes. And the ally of this stupidity was the pride
of the 'better stratum' of society which thought it would degrade itself if it condescended to
stoop to the level of the 'Plebe.' The millions of our German fellow countrymen would never
have been alienated from their people if the leading strata of society had shown any care for
their welfare.

You must say farewell to the hope that you can expect any action from the parties of the
Right on behalf of the freedom of the German people. The most elementary factor is lacking:
the will, the courage, the energy. Where then can any strength still be found within the
German people? It is to be found, as always, in the great masses: THERE ENERGY IS
SLUMBERING AND IT ONLY AWAITS THE MAN WHO WILL SUMMON IT FROM
ITS PRESENT SLUMBER AND WILL HURL IT INTO THE GREAT BATTLE FOR THE
DESTINY OF THE GERMAN RACE.

The battle which alone can liberate Germany will be fought out with the forces which
well up from the great masses. Without the help of the German workingman you will never
regain a German Reich. Not in our political salons lies the strength of the nation, but in the
hand, in the brain, and in the will of the great masses. Now as ever: Liberation does not come
down from above, it will spring up from below.... If we today make the highest demands upon
everyone, that is only in order that we may give back to him and to his child the highest gift:
Freedom and the respect of the rest of the world....

The parties of the Right have lost all energy: they see the flood coming, but their one
longing is just for once in their lives to form a Government. Unspeakably incapable, utterly
lacking in energy, cowards all - such are all these bourgeois parties and that at the moment
when the nation needs heroes -not chatterers.

In the Left there is somewhat more energy, but it is used for the ruin of Germany. The
Communists on principle reject the discipline imposed by the State: in its stead they preach
party discipline: they reject the administration of the State as a bureaucracy, while they fall on
their knees before the bureaucracy of their own Movement. There is arising a State within the
State which stands in deadly enmity against the State which we know, the State of the
community of the people. This new State ultimately produces men who reject with fanaticism
their own people so that in the end Foreign Powers find in them their allies. Such is the result
of Marxist teaching....

What we want is not a State of drones but a State which gives to everyone that to which
on the basis of his own activity he has a right. He who refuses to do honest work shall not be a
citizen of the State. The State is not a plantation where the interests of foreign capital are
supreme. Capital is not the master of the State, but its servant. Therefore the State must not be
brought into dependence on international loan capital. And if anyone believes that that cannot
be avoided, then do not let him be surprised that no one is ready to give his life for this State.
Further, that greatest injustice must be corrected which today still weighs heavily upon our
people and upon almost all peoples. If in a State only he who does honest work is a citizen,
then everyone has the right to demand that in his old age he shall be kept free from care and
want. That would mean the realization of the greatest social achievement.

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

April 27, 1923

[excerpt]

lat we need if we are to have a real People's State is a land reform.... We do not
[believe that the mere dividing up of the land can by itself bring any alleviation.
The conditions of a nation's life can in the last resort be bettered only through the
political will to expansion. Therein lies the essential characteristic of a sound reform.

And land [Grund und Boden], we must insist, cannot be made an object for speculation.
Private property can be only that which a man has gained for himself, has won through his
work. A natural product is not private property, that is national property. Land is thus no
object for bargaining.

Further, there must be a reform in our law. Our present law regards only the rights of
the individual. It does not regard the protection of the race, the protection of the community of
the people. It permits the befouling of the nation's honor and of the greatness of the nation. A
law which is so far removed from the conception of the community of the people is in need of
reform.

Further, changes are needed in our system of education. We suffer today from an excess
of culture [Ueberbildung] Only knowledge is valued. But wiseacres are the enemies of action.
What we need is instinct and will. Most people have lost both through their 'culture.' We have,
it is true, a highly intellectual class, but it is lacking in energy. If, through our overvaluation of
mechanical knowledge, we had not so far removed ourselves from popular sentiment, the Jew
would never have found his way to our people so easily as he has done. What we need is the
possibility of a continuous succession of intellectual leaders drawn from the people itself.

Clear away the Jews! Our own people has genius enough - we need no Hebrews. If we
were to put in their place intelligences drawn from the great body of our people, then we
should have recovered the bridge which leads to the community of the people.

AGAIN, WE NEED A REFORM OF THE GERMAN PRESS.

A press which is on principle anti-national cannot be tolerated in Germany. Whoever
denies the nation can have no part in it. We must demand that the press shall become the
instrument of the national self-education.

FINALLY WE NEED A REFORM IN THE SPHERE OF ART, LITERATURE, AND
THE THEATER. The Government must see to it that its people is not poisoned. There is a
higher right which is based on the recognition of that which harms a people, and that which
harms a people must be done away with.

And after this reform we shall come to recognize the duty of self-preservation. A man
who says: 'I deny that I have a right to defend my personal life' has thereby denied his right to
exist. TO BE A PACIFIST ARGUES A LACK OF CONVICTION, A LACK OF
CHARACTER. For the pacifist is indeed ready enough to claim the help of others, but

himself declines to defend himself. It is precisely the same with a people. A people which is
not prepared to protect itself is a people without character. We must recover for our people as
one of its most elementary principles the recognition of the fact that a man is truly man only if
he defends and protects himself, that a people deserves that name only if in case of necessity
it is prepared as a people to enter the lists. That is not militarism, that is self-preservation.

THEREFORE WE NATIONAL SOCIALISTS STAND FOR COMPULSORY
MILITARY SERVICE FOR EVERY MAN. If a State is not worth that - then away with it!
Then you must not complain if you are enslaved. But if you believe that you must be free,
then you must learn to recognize that no one gives you freedom save only your own sword.
What our people needs is not leaders in Parliament, but those who are determined to carry
through what they see to be right before God, before the world, and before their own
consciences - and to carry that through, if need be, in the teeth of majorities. And if we
succeed in raising such leaders from the body of our people, then around them once again a
nation will crystallize itself... It is the pride of our Movement to be the force which shall
awake the Germany of fighters which yet shall be.

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

May 01, 1923

[excerpt]

(jjf f the first of May is to be transferred in accordance with ItS true meaning from the
/ J| life of Nature to the life of peoples, then it must symbolize the renewal of the body
v. of a people which has fallen into senility. And in the life of peoples senility means
internationalism. What is born of senility? Nothing, nothing at all. Whatever in human
civilization has real value, that arose not out of internationalism, it sprang from the soul of a
single people. When peoples have lost their creative vigor, then they become international
Everywhere, wherever intellectual incapacity rules in the life of peoples, there
internationalism appears. And it is no chance that the promoter of this cast of thought is a
people which itself can boast of no real creative force - the Jewish people....

So the first of May can be only a glorification of the national creative will over against
the conception of international disintegration, of the liberation of the nation's spirit and of its
economic outlook from the infection of internationalism. That is in the last resort the question
of the restoration to health of peoples . . . and the question arises: Is the German oak ever
destined to see another springtime? And that is where the mission of our Movement begins.
We have the strength to conquer that which the autumn has brought upon us. Our will is to be
National Socialists - not national in the current sense of the word - not national by halves. We
are National Socialist fanatics, not dancers on the tight-rope of moderation!

There are three words which many use without a thought which for us are no catch-
phrases: Love, Faith, and Hope. We National Socialists wish to love our Fatherland, we wish
to learn to love it, to learn to love it jealously, to love it alone and to suffer no other idol to
stand by its side. We know only one interest and that is the interest of our people.

We are fanatical in our love for our people, and we are anxious that so-called 'national
governments' should be conscious of that fact. We can go as loyally as a dog with those who
share our sincerity, but we will pursue with fanatical hatred the man who believes that he can
play tricks with this love of ours. We cannot go with governments who look two ways at
once, who squint both towards the Right and towards the Left. We are straightforward: it must
be either love or hate.

We have faith in the rights of our people, the rights which have existed time out of
mind. We protest against the view that every other nation should have rights - and we have
none. We must learn to make our own this blind faith in the rights of our people, in the
necessity of devoting ourselves to the service of these rights; we must make our own the faith
that gradually victory must be granted us if only we are fanatical enough. And from this love
and from this faith there emerges for us the idea of hope. When others doubt and hesitate for
the future of Germany - we have no doubts. We have both the hope and the faith that
Germany will and must once more become great and mighty.

We have both the hope and the faith that the day will come on which Germany shall
stretch from Koenigsberg to Strassburg, and from Hamburg to Vienna.

We have faith that one day Heaven will bring the Germans back into a Reich over
which there shall be no Soviet star, no Jewish star of David, but above that Reich there shall
be the symbol of German labor - the Swastika. And that will mean that the first of May has
truly come.

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

May 04, 1923

My dear fellow Germans !

(T R

len Cuno became Chancellor of the German Reich people said that the failure of
the policy of compliance necessitated a change in the leadership of the
Reich.What did the policy of compliance mean then? That's very simple: you
must try as far as possible to satisfy your adversary's demands so as to make Germany's
recovery possible. It was unimportant whether or not there was any legal basis for these
demands. No state could do more than Germany to fulfill them. But the German People are
required to make reparations which exceed the entire wealth of the nation. So these
requirements must have a very definite purpose, an agenda which goes far beyond economics.
France does not want reparations; it wants the destruction of Germany, the fulfillment of an
age-old dream; a Europe dominated by France.

"Reparations" are nothing but a "legal device" intended to bring a state to its knees with
a facade of legality, to destroy the fabric of a nation and to replace one state with a
conglomeration of small states which consume and destroy each other.

So the only way that the Government could satisfy France was by liquidating the
German Reich, by bringing about its dissolution. Satisfying France is not an economic but a
political question. This was what caused the downfall of Dr. Wirth. To satisfy France he
would have to destroy Germany; that he cannot do; and what he can do, will not satisfy
France.

From this we can clearly see where the road to Germany's recovery lies. Our first
priority must be the defense of the nation. That is primarily not a technical matter but a
question of psychology and of the will to accomplish this. Only when we have solved that
problem can the rebuilding of Germany begin, and that will not be accomplished until the
German People once again recognize that politics are driven by power and power alone. As
long as the German People and its governments fail to understand this, all talk of
reconstruction is pure nonsense. And for four and a half years the German People have had to
listen to this nonsense as the "official wisdom of the Government". Our nation faces a two-
fold challenge: first spiritual and then material rearmament. Spiritual rearmament means
reeducating the nation, teaching it to defend itself, to represent its vital interests and to assert
its rights. How can the national will be strengthened? By destroying whatever opposes it. The
choice is: national, or anti-national and international? This all-important question -
nationalism or internationalism - must be decided; only then can the spiritual rearmament of
our nation be achieved.

After that it is only a question of technical implementation, the utilization of the will.
But that is easy, child's play. Where would France be today if Germany had no
"internationalists" but only National Socialists! And even if right now we had no other
weapons than our bare fists! If only sixty million people had the will to be fanatical
nationalists, weapons would grow out of our bare fists. And then France would not dare to
treat Germany as it does now.

If you want to free yourselves from the "obligation to provide reparations", you cannot
possibly do this by endless compliance. The only way is to have the strength of will to one
day tear up the Treaty of Versailles and in to develop instead the ability to defend our nation
and ultimately to attack its enemies.

Wirth replaced power by "the higher principle of justice ". Then came Cuno. The
German People were happy now. Herr Cuno was sure to be better than Wirth. But that was
all. He, too, failed to recognize the essential fact that Germany was confronted not by an
economic but a political problem. The reawakening of the nation's will to act. Cuno's
preoccupation with economics was clear as soon as the invasion of the Ruhr took place. Right
now the French do not care whether they receive coal. If we in our "magnificent" financial
position can live without the Ruhr, then the French, too, will be able to live without the Ruhr.
People said that the French would exert pressure on their government. Indeed they are, but not
in the direction that we assume!

At that time Cuno believed that the invasion of the Ruhr had taken place for economic
reasons and so he adopted a policy of passive resistance. But passive resistance makes no
sense unless it is supported by a national campaign of active resistance. Unfortunately that is
not the case. The first thing that we should have done the day that the invasion of the Ruhr
took place was to rip up the Treaty of Versailles and tell them to keep their scraps of paper:
Germany is free again! At that time the world was shocked by the actions of the French and
expected us to do something like that. We would have had the sympathy of the entire world.
But now it is almost too late.

The Government should also have asked itself: who is willing to undertake active
resistance in Germany? Only those to whom Germany still means something. Not the
parliamentary blabbermouths, not the scum who are our politicians today, but only the men
who wear a steel helmet and the swastika.

Cuno should have realized that the democrats and those even further to their left are
pacifist and anti-German parties. They demand nothing but submissiveness, negotiation at any
price. What should he have done if he had realized this? He should have strengthened the
nationalistic element, because it alone was viable.

If it were possible in Germany today to unite one and a half million people in support of
a single platform, who if necessary were ready to sacrifice themselves for their Fatherland,
Germany would be saved. But then that million people would have to be sure that their
Government was firmly behind them and would have to be able to say to themselves: we are
not fighting in vain, nor shall we die as our brothers did in the years 1914-18 so that Germany
can be turned into a pigsty.

Even today there are still hundreds of thousands who love their Fatherland above all
else; but the Fatherland must show them greater love than the others. If they are expected to
make the supreme sacrifice for Germany, they should have been given back the symbol of
former immortal victories, the banner which fluttered at the forefront of our regiments. Why
didn't the Government do that? Because they want "moderation" in everything. Just take a
look at what goes on in the state legislature (Landtag) !

If they continue to blunder on like that for years there will no longer be a Germany or a
Bavaria. Today the German parliamentarians are bringing about the destruction, the end of the

German nation. They no longer recognize the creative power of the individual. What
outstanding personalities has the Republic produced? People like to make comparisons with
the ancient republics. But you cannot compare a Wutzlhofer with a Marius or a Schweyer
with a Sulla.

They would not even permit a strong-willed individual to exist. They do not want
anything superior to their own mediocrity. They are afraid that someone without a
parliamentary majority might have power. If a Frederick the Great were to appear again
today, they would probably pass emergency legislation aimed at him!

You would think that a "statesman" who was a failure would disappear for ever. But in
a parliamentary state he merely goes back to the end of the line and waits for another turn.
And when he reaches the front of the line, he is back in power. Even the ancient republics
with their rigid conception of the state were ruled by a dictator in times of national
emergency. When the lives of nations are at risk, national and provincial parliaments are
useless; only giants can save the nation.

In the course of history German parliamentarians have incurred an enormous burden of
guilt for failing the German People. Once before they dug the nation's grave. When the
German nation last set out to accomplish great deeds, who prepared Germany then? A
national parliament (Reichstag)? God knows, in those days even the state legislatures did
whatever they could to ruin Germany. It was one man alone who created the Reich: Bismarck.

And then people think that the recovery of the nation can come from the parliamentary
system? The course of history cannot be changed; the German parliamentary system is
digging its own grave. And all that will be left for us to do is lay it to rest in that grave. So
what if they talk of national authority in the state legislature (Landtag), where is ours? France
has it. We have none.

They allow the Hammer and Sickle to fly from the Bavaria monument. Would to God
that Ludwig I had risen from his grave that day! I wonder whether he would have cursed us or
the Government which desecrated his monument like that. (Thunderous applause). We believe
that we must answer for our actions not only to future generations but to those who came
before us. A new time will come and it will decide who it was who acted properly here. And
only then will people realize that they protected the people who betrayed their Fatherland.

But it is the fire in the hearts of Germany's young folk which will bring us ultimate
victory. It will be they who will sustain the state which they will create for themselves. New
young warriors are coming forward in Germany, young men who have already shed their
blood for their Fatherland but know full well that because of those who rule Germany today
their blood was shed in vain. The parliamentarians do not enjoy the respect of the nation; they
have to pass protective legislation to defend themselves. Germany can be saved only by the
dictatorship of the national will and determination to take action.

People ask: is there someone fit to be our leader? Our task is not to search for that
person. Either God will give him to us or he will not come. Our task is to shape the sword that
he will need when he comes. Our task it to provide the leader with a nation which is ready for
him when he comes! My fellow Germans, awaken! The new day is dawning!

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

August 01, 1923

[excerpt]

lere are two things which can unite men: common ideals and common
criminality. We have inscribed upon our banner the great Germanic ideal and for
'that ideal we will fight to the last drop of our blood. We National Socialists have
realized that from the international cesspool of infamy, from the Berlin of today, nothing can
come to save the Fatherland. We know that two things alone will save us: first, the end of
internal corruption, the cleansing out of all those who owe their existence simply to the
protection of their party comrades. Through the most brutal ruthlessness towards all party
officials we must restore our finances. It must be proved that the official is not a party man,
but a specialist! The body of German officials must once more become what once it was. But
the second and the most important point is that the day must come when a German
government shall summon up the courage to declare to the Foreign Powers: 'The Treaty of
Versailles is founded on a monstrous lie. We refuse to carry out its terms any longer. Do what
you will! If you wish for war, go and get it! Then we shall see whether you can turn seventy
million Germans into serfs and slaves!'

If cowards cry out: 'But we have no arms!' that is neither here nor there! When the
whole German people knows one will and one will only - to be free - in that hour we shall
have the instrument with which to win our freedom. It matters not whether these weapons of
ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and
before our God. When the eyes of German children look questioning into ours, when we see
the suffering and distress of millions of our fellow-countrymen who without any fault of
theirs have fallen into this frightful misfortune, then we laugh at the curses of the whole
world, if from these curses there issues the freedom of our race.

But since we know that today the German people consists for one-third of heroes, for
another third of cowards, while the rest are traitors, as a condition of our freedom in respect of
the outside world we would first cleanse our domestic life. The present 'United Front' has
failed in that task. The day of another 'United Front' will come. But before that there must be a
day of reckoning for those who for four and a half years have led us on their criminal ways.
The domestic battle must come before the battle with the world without - the final decision
between those who say We are Germans and proud of the fact' and those who do not wish to
be Germans or who are not Germans at all. Our Movement is opposed with the cry 'The
Republic is in danger!' Your Republic of the Ninth of November? In very truth it is: the
November- Republic is in danger! How long, think you, you can maintain this 'State? . . .

Our Movement was not formed with any election in view, but in order to spring to the
rescue of this people as its last help in the hour of greatest need, at the moment when in fear
and despair it sees the approach of the Red Monster. The task of our Movement is still today
not to prepare ourselves for any coming election but to prepare for the coming collapse of the
Reich, so that when the old trunk falls the young fir-tree may be already standing. The Via
dolorosa of Germany from Wirth, by way of Cuno to Stresemann, will end in the dictatorship
of a Jewish lord of finance.... WE WANT TO BE THE SUPPORTERS OF THE
DICTATORSHIP OF NATIONAL REASON, OF NATIONAL ENERGY, OF NATIONAL

BRUTALITY AND RESOLUTION. GERMANY CAN BE SAVED ONLY THROUGH
ACTION, WHEN THROUGH OUR TALKING HERE THE BANDAGE HAS BEEN TORN
FROM THE EYES OF THE LAST OF THE BEFOOLED. It is from our Movement that
redemption will come - that today is the feeling of millions. That has become almost a new
religious faith! And there will be only two possibilities: either Berlin marches and ends up in
Munich, or Munich marches and ends up in Berlin! A bolshevist North Germany and a
nationalist Bavaria cannot exist side by side, and the greatest influence upon the fortunes of
the German Reich will be his who shall restore the Reich.... Either Germany sinks, and we
through our despicable cowardice sink with it, or else we dare to enter on the fight against
death and devil and rise up against the fate that has been planned for us. THEN WE SHALL
SEE WHICH IS THE STRONGER: THE SPIRIT OF INTERNATIONAL JEWRY OR THE
WILL OF GERMANY.

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

September 12, 1923

[excerpt]

le Republic was founded to be a milk-cow for its founders - for the whole
parliamentary gang. It was never intended to be a State for the German people,
)ut a feeding ground, as pleasant and as rich a feeding-ground as possible. There
never was any thought of giving to the German people a free State: the object was to provide
a mob of the lowest scoundrels with an obliging object for their exploitation. The fruit of the
honest work of other folk has been stolen by those who themselves have never worked. And if
we refuse to grasp the facts, the outside world knows better. The outside world despises the
representatives of this November-Republic! Neither in society nor in the meetings of
diplomats are they regarded as equals, much less as men of character.

Think of Lloyd George - this man with the single fanatical idea - that England must be
led to victory. There comes up to him one of the 'November men' of whom he knows: 'My
people would have been defeated if your people by you had not been...' How will Lloyd
George receive him? Surely with unspeakable contempt! For he knows what we can only
guess, how in the war the millions of gold poured into Germany, how they began to take
effect, how great associations of traitors were formed through foreign gold - through his gold.
And now he sees face to face the man to whom before he paid out the Judas-wage. What do
you think Lloyd George will do? He can only spit at the sight. Never can any one of the
'November criminals' represent Germany before the world! . . .

The Republic, by God! is worthy of its fathers. For hardly was the first deed of shame
committed when there followed the second - one dishonor after another! One can scarcely
believe any longer that there was once a time when one could speak of the Germans as the
first people in the world.

The essential character of the November-Republic is to be seen in the comings and
goings to London, to Spa, to Paris and Genoa. Subservience towards the enemy, surrender of
the human dignity of the German, pacifist cowardice, tolerance of every indignity, readiness
to agree to everything until nothing more remains. This November Republic bore the stamp of
the men who made it. The name 'November criminals' will cling to these folk throughout the
centuries....

How are States founded? Through the personality of brilliant leaders and through a
people which deserves to have the crown of laurel bound about its brows. Compare with them
the 'heroes' of this Republic! Shirkers, Deserters, and Pacifists: these are its founders and their
heroic acts consisted in leaving in the lurch the soldiers at the front, in stopping
reinforcements, in withholding from them munitions, while at home against old men and half-
starved children they carried through a revolutionary coup d'etat. They have quite simply got
together their November State by theft! In the face of the armies returning wearied from the
front these thieves have still posed as the saviors of the Fatherland! They declared the
Pacifist-Democratic Republic. On the other hand I ask: What can be the only meaning of
loyalty to the State? The loyalty of heroes ! This Revolution has dishonored the old heroes on
whom the whole earth had looked with wonder; it allowed the scum of the streets to tear off

their decorations and to hurl into the mire all that was sacred to the heroes of the front line.
And how does the Republic honor now the new heroes? Schlageter? By warrants for his
arrest.

Pacifism as the idea of the State, international law instead of power - all means are good
enough to unman the people. They hold India up to us as a model and what is called 'passive
resistance.' True, they want to make an India of Germany, a folk of dreams which turns away
its face from realities, in order that they can oppress it for all eternity, that they may span it
body and soul to the yoke of slavery....

In the economic sphere this Revolution has proved to be an immense misfortune. The
districts which were most important for the feeding of our people were lost and districts which
are the condition for the feeding of the nation have been treasonably alienated. And what did
the Revolution not prophesy for us in the political sphere? One heard of the right of Self-
Determination of Peoples, of the League of Nations, of Self-Government of the People. And
what was the result? A World Peace, but a World Peace over a Germany which was but a
field of corpses. Disarmament, but only the disarmament of Germany, with Germany looting
its own resources. Self-determination, yes, but self-determination for every Negro tribe: and
Germany does not count as a Negro tribe. League of Nations, yes: but a League of Nations
which serves only as the guarantor for the fulfillment of the Peace Treaty, not for a better
world order which is to come. And government by the people - for five years past no one has
asked the people what it thinks of the act of November of the year 1918: at the head of the
Reich there stands a President who is rejected by the overwhelming majority of the people
and who has not been chosen by the people. Seventeen million Germans are in misery under
foreign rule.

Hardly ever in five years has so much been torn away from the German nation as in
these years of the so-called successful Revolution. We have been rendered defenseless: we are
without rights: we have become the pariahs of the world. What are our organs of government
today but organs for executing the will of foreign tyrants? . . .

We were given a Free State which never deserved the name of 'free.' Then they called it
a 'People's State.' But think you that bankers can form a government which befits a 'People's
State'?

In fact the Revolution made three changes in our State: it internationalized the German
State, the economic life of Germany, and the German people itself. Thereby Germany has
been turned into a colony of the outside world. Those who were fed with the ideal of the
International were in fact placed under the 'Diktat' of the International. They have their
international State: today international finance is king....

While the masses were still told lies about 'socialization,' the economic life of Germany
was in fact socialized, not by the German people, but by the outside world....

Through the internationalization of the nation itself in the end a people ceases to be
master of its own fate: it becomes the puppet of alien forces.

Is that, now, a People's Revolution? Is such a construction a People's State? No, it is the
Jews' Paradise.

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

February 26, 1924

[excerpt]

(jjf t seems strange to me that a man who, as a soldier, was for six years accustomed to
/ J| blind obedience, should suddenly come into conflict with the State and its
v_ Constitution. The reasons for this stem from the days of my youth. When I was
seventeen I came to Vienna, and there I learned to study and observe three important
problems: the social question, the race problem, and, finally, the Marxist movement. I left
Vienna a confirmed anti-Semite, a deadly foe of the whole Marxist world outlook, and pan-
German in my political principles. And since I knew that the German destiny of German-
Austria would not be fought out in the Austrian Army alone, but in the German and Austrian
Army, I enlisted in the German Army....

When, on November 7, [1918] it was announced that the Revolution had broken out in
Munich, I at first could not believe it. At that time there arose in me the determination to
devote myself to politics. I went through the period of the Soviets, and as a result of my
opposition to them I came in contact with the National Socialist German Workers Movement,
which at that time numbered six members. I was the seventh. I attached myself to this party,
and not to one of the great political parties where my prospects would have been better,
because none of the other parties understood or even recognized the decisive, fundamental
problem.

By Marxism I understand a doctrine which in principle rejects the idea of the worth of
personality, which replaces individual energy by the masses and thereby works the destruction
of our whole cultural life. This movement has utilized monstrously effective methods and
exercised tremendous influence on the masses, which in the course of three or four decades
could have no other result than that the individual has become his own brother's foe, while at
the same time calling a Frenchman, an Englishman, or a Zulu his brother. This movement is
distinguished by incredible terror, which is based on a knowledge of mass psychology....

The German Revolution is a revolution, and therefore successful high treason; it is well
known that such treason is never punished....

For us it was a filthy crime against the German people, a stab in the back of the German
nation. The middle class could not take up arms against it because the middle class did not
understand the whole revolution. It was necessary to start a new struggle and to incite against
the Marxist despoilers of the people who did not even belong to the German race - which is
where the Marxist problem is linked with the race problem, forming one of the most difficult
and profound questions of our time....

Personally, at the beginning I held a lost position. Nevertheless, in the course of a few
years there has grown from a little band of six men a movement which today embraces
millions and which, above all, has once made the broad masses nationalistic...

In 1923 came the great and bitter scandal. As early as 1922 we had seen that the Ruhr
was about to be lost. France's aim was not merely to weaken Germany, to keep her from

obtaining supremacy, but to break her up into small states so that she [France] would be able
to hold the Rhine frontier. After all the Government's reiterations of our weakness, we knew
that on top of the Saar and Upper Silesia we would lose our third coal region, the Ruhr; each
loss brought on the next one....

Only burning, ruthless, brutal fanaticism could have saved the situation. The Reich
Government should have let the hundreds of thousands of young men who were pouring out
of the Ruhr into the Reich under the old colors of black- white-red flow together in a mighty
national wave. Instead, these young people were sent back home. The resistance that was
organized was for wages; the national resistance was degraded to a paid general strike. It was
forgotten that a foe like France cannot be prayed away, still less can he be idled away....

Our youth has - and may this be heard in Paris - but one thought: that the day may come

when we shall again be free My attitude is this: I would rather that Germany go

Bolshevist and I be hanged than that she should be destroyed by the French rule of the
sword.... It turned out that the back-stabbers were stronger than ever.... With pride I admit that
our men were the only ones to really resist in the Ruhr. We intended to hold fourteen
meetings and introduce a propaganda campaign throughout Germany with the slogan: DOWN
WITH THE RUHR TRAITORS!, But we were surprised by the banning of these mass
meetings. I had met Herr von Kahr in 1920. Kahr had impressed me as being an honest
official. I asked him why the fourteen mass meetings had been banned. The reason he gave
me simply would not hold water. THE REAL REASON WAS SOMETHING THAT COULD
NOT BE REVEALED. . - -

From the very first day the watchword was: UNLIMITED STRUGGLE AGAINST
BERLIN....

The struggle against Berlin, as Dr. von Kahr would lead it, is a crime; one must have the
courage to be logical and see that the struggle must be incorporated in the German national
uprising. I said that all that had been made of this struggle was a Bavarian rejection of Berlin's
requests. But the people expected something other than a reduction in the price of beer,
regulation of the price of milk and confiscation of butter tubs and other such impossible
economic proposals - proposals which make you want to ask: who is the genius that is
advising them? Every failure could only further enrage the masses, and I pointed out that
while the people were now only laughing at Kahr's measures, later on they would rise up
against them. I said: Either you finish the job - and there is only the political and military
struggle left. When you cross the Rubicon, you must march on Rome. Or else you do not want
to struggle; then only capitulation is left....'

The struggle had to turn toward the North; it could not be led by a purely Bavarian
organization ... I said: 'The only man to head it is Ludendorff.'

I had first seen Ludendorff in 1918, in the field. In 1920 I first spoke personally with
him. I saw that he was not only the outstanding general, but that he had now learned the
lesson and understood what had brought the German nation to ruin. That Ludendorff was
talked down by the others was one more reason for me to come closer to him. I therefore
proposed Ludendorff, and Lossow and Seisser had no objections.

I further explained to Lossow that right now nothing could be accomplished by petty
economic measures. The fight was against Marxism. To solve this problem, not administrators

were needed but firebrands who would be in a position to inflame the national spirit to the
extreme. Kahr could not do that, I pointed out; the youth were not behind him. I declared that
I could join them only on the condition that the political struggle was put into my hands alone.
This was not impudence or immodesty; I believe that when a man knows he can do a job, he
must not be modest....

One thing was certain: Lossow, Kahr, and Seisser had the same goal that we had: to get
rid of the Reich Government with its present international and parliamentary position, and to
replace it by an anti-parliamentary government. If our undertaking was actually high treason,
then during this whole period Lossow, Seisser, and Kahr must have been committing high
treason along with us - for during all those months we talked of nothing but the aims of which
we now stand accused....

How could we have called for a new government if we had not known that the
gentlemen in power were altogether on our side? How else could we, two days before, have
given such orders as: at 8:30 o'clock such and such a government will be proclaimed....

Lossow talked of a coup d'etat. Kahr quite openly declared that he would give the word
to strike. The only possible interpretation of this talk is that these men wanted to strike, but
each time lost their nerve. Our last conversation, on November 6, was for me the absolute
confirmation of my belief that these men wanted to, but lost their nerve!

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

March 27, 1924

Gentlemen!

(jjf read in the indictment the following sentences: "It is true that what took place in
/ J| November 1918, namely the deposing of the rulers of the federal principalities by
v. the Council of People's Representatives, was an act of high treason. However, at the
time the new government rapidly established itself throughout the entire Reich; the executive
power was in fact in the hands of the People's Representatives and hence the de facto situation
became a legal reality. That is recognized law." If this theory were recognized and were the
law, Germany would never free itself from its shackles, for we, too, were conquered by might,
and by might we were subdued and muzzled. Might is never identical with right.

Frederick the Great once said something which clearly defined the relationship of might
and right. He said that the law is worth nothing if it is not defended by the sword. In other
words, the law was always worthless unless protected by might. Let me give you a few
practical examples from recent history. In April 1919 a small band of criminally-minded
individuals overthrew the revolutionary government and established a new one. Soviet flags
were hoisted, and there is no doubt that these men held the real power. Nevertheless this
power was not legitimate and if the Soviet revolutionaries were to seize power all over
Germany and all over Europe, the day would come when they would fall from power.

We find the same thing in Hungary. There, too, Bela Kun established a red regime; he,
too, seized all the instruments of power and took total control. However, a small group of
freedom fighters made it possible to reestablish genuine legal authority. At that time a small
minority virtually tyrannized Hungary but this minority was genuinely representative of the
Hungarian People.

What did Bismarck do in the constitutional conflict? He disregarded the Constitution,
Parliament and the stifling majority and supported only by the instruments of power of the
state, the army, the civil service and the Crown, he governed.. The opposition press called that
a violation of the constitution and high treason. Well, what endowed Bismarck's actions with
legitimacy? The actions he took would perhaps have been high treason if the outcome had not
been the unification of the German nation, and if it had not brought Germany to the height of
perfection and freedom. On the day when the German Kaiser was crowned in Paris the act of
high treason was legitimized before the German People and the whole world.

We have two new coups d'etat before our very eyes: the Turkish General Kemal Pasha
opposes the central government in Constantinople. He goes so far as to refuse to acknowledge
the sacred power of the supreme head of the Moslem religion. What ultimately made this act
legal is the fact that he achieved freedom for his People. Mussolini's action was legitimized by
the enormous clean-up he undertook. The march on Rome was legalized on the day when
Rome was cleansed of the symptoms of the same marasmus that we find in our political life.

What was the situation in Germany? What was the situation in our fatherland in the year
1918? At the time Germany was neither in such a miserable state nor so corrupt that the
revolution can be regarded as an absolute necessity. Heine, who later became the Social

Democratic Minister of the Interior, stated that the old Prussia and the former Reich was
unquestionably the best administered country in the whole world. No other state had such
honest and principled civil servants as the former Germany, no other nation possessed an
army in which the highest regard for personal honor had become a tradition. This applied both
internally and externally. Twenty-six states tried to defeat this Reich but in a struggle which
lasted for four years they failed, a proof of the power and strength of this Reich. There was no
real need for a revolution.

If we ask ourselves whether the revolution was successful, we must first examine what
the aim of the revolution was. The revolution promised our German People everything under
the sun: a life of beauty and dignity in which they would want for nothing and work shorter
hours than before. There was talk of the struggle against the supra-national power of
international capital, and what came of it? In this court room stood a General of the new
Reich and was forced to admit that the economic failure of this new regime was so extreme
that the masses were driven on to the streets. However, the soldiers who were supposed to fire
on the masses were not willing to constantly shoot people who had been driven to desperation
by the incompetence of their government. There can be no more scathing indictment than that.
I will not talk of the hunger of millions, but I shall only draw attention to the consequences of
the devaluation of our currency, which has robbed thousands of their hard-earned life savings.

This revolution has had a disastrous effect upon the economy. The largest agricultural
areas of our nation were lost, and areas which were vital for the food supply of the nation
were disposed of, which was outright treason! And let us not forget all the political benefits
which the Revolution was supposed to bring. They talked of the right of self-determination for
every nation, of the League of Nations, of self-government by the people. And what did we
get? World peace, but world peace in exchange for the demise of our nation. Disarmament,
but only the disarmament of Germany so that it could be plundered. The right of self-
determination, yes, but the right of self-determination for each and every tribe of Negroes, and
Germany does not even count as a tribe of Negroes. The League of Nations, but a League of
Nations only as the guarantor that the terms of the Peace Treaty will be complied with and not
as the guarantor of a new and better world order.

And the People's regime! For five years the People have not been asked what they feel
about the events of November 1918. At the head of the government is a Reichsprasident who
is rejected by the vast majority of the people and who was not elected by them. Seventeen
million Germans suffer under foreign rule. Hardly ever has the German nation be robbed of so
much in five years as was in these years of the so called successful revolution. We have been
rendered defenseless and thus deprived of our rights. We have become the pariah of the
world. What are our organs of government today other than the means by which foreign
powers tyrannize us?

What did the revolution achieve towards the solution of the most serious problem of our
national life, what did it do to improve the lot of Germans? How was the German nation to be
freed from all the restrictions and restraints of our former unideal view of things? They
promised to give the German People equal rights and what happened? There is nothing which
cannot eventually be replaced, even the lost territories can be reconquered, but the wrong
done to us in these five years can never be erased from our history. All that was great, noble
and sacred has been defiled. They had the impertinence to put German heroes on trial, to
parade them in chains, men whose only crime was that they fought for their fatherland, and
who were made the object of the scorn of the entire world. Clausewitz once proudly declared:

"Woe to the country which voluntarily accepts the shame of dishonor and slavery, for it is
better for a nation to perish but yet maintain its honor."

The shame of voluntary enslavement leads to the utter collapse of a nation. Can anyone
claim that the revolution has succeeded when the object of the revolution, Germany, is being
destroyed? When would the revolution have succeeded? And what was supposed to happen
then? Do not imagine that we are narrow-minded reactionaries screaming our heads off.
Nobody denies that at that time as a result of four and a half years of warfare many things
were not as they should have been. Everyone longed to return home. There were great
hardships on the home front.

If the revolution is to be described as successful, it should have achieved one thing
above all else. The French revolution of 1870 was unable to save the French but it did
preserve the nation's honor, and thus the German revolution should at least have

preserved the honor of the German nation. If at that time Ebert, Scheidemann and their
friends had called on the German People to take up the fight for freedom, and if, like the
members of the Italian parliament, they had rushed to the front, and had urged the soldiers not
to leave their fatherland helpless, they would not have shamefully capitulated; they would
have fought to the last, and then, believe me, the Republic would still be intact, and none of us
would raise a hand against it.

I regard the Prosecutor's statement as the most convincing proof of what I have said.
The Prosecutor stated that the root cause of what had taken place was the erosion of the
authority of the state. Whatever remnants of authority we still possess today can be traced
ultimately to the beginnings of the present Reich; it was Frederick William who established
the authority of the state. It was the great king who said of himself: "I am the servant of the
State!" This applies equally to them all, even the old heroic Kaiser himself.

Today we all still benefit from this authority of the state. The authority of the state was
identical with the well-being of the People, it was not something which was prejudicial to the
well-being of the People. Carlyle emphasizes that Frederick the Great devoted his entire life's
work to the service of his People.

Do you believe that those who wielded supreme power in the Reich in November 1918
had clean enough hands to maintain the authority of the state of a Frederick the Great? No ! In
the family the father must embody authority; and if the children are disobedient, it is the
father's fault. The father, the state as we know it today, is incapable of such authority.
Authority based on the destruction of authority does not exist. We all have but one great
desire, namely that a Reich will return in which authority is reestablished, in which it need not
be protected by bayonets but exists as a matter of course....

...Two powers will determine the future development of Europe: England and France.
England with its perpetual and unchanging goal of Balkanizing Europe and creating a
European equilibrium which ensures that its power remains unthreatened. England is not in
reality Germany's enemy. Germany's enemy is the power which is striving for supremacy in
Europe. France is without question Germany's enemy. Whereas England requires the
Balkanization of Europe, France requires the Balkanization of Germany in order to dominate
Europe. After a four and a half year struggle, and thanks to the Revolution, the coalition of
these two powers was victorious. With the following result: France had to decide whether or

not to accomplish what had always been its objective in the war: namely, to destroy Germany
and to deprive it of all its sources of food. Today France is watching its age-old plan take
effect; irrespective of which government in France holds power in future, its primary goal will
remain to annihilate Germany, liquidate twenty million Germans and break-up Germany into
individual states.

This is Germany's situation thanks to the despicable attitude of its government. It is no
wonder that the timid look around in terror and say: "There's nothing more that we can do
because we are defenseless." That is where our task began. We stressed that the real value of a
nation lies not in its inanimate weapons but in its living will. If it lacks the will to defend
itself, all the weapons in the world are of no avail. This is what we impressed on people when
they lay on their bellies defenseless before the Entente Commission. We tried to arouse their
patriotism and we also rekindled hatred.

No power will accept our handshake unless it is convinced that the hand which is
offered also represents the fists of 70 million Germans each of whom has the iron will to take
up the struggle for freedom and for the nation. This was the necessity which we recognized....

...The army which we have formed is growing in numbers each day, and more rapidly as
each hour passes. In these very days I cherish the proud hope that these unorganized troops
will one day form battalions, the battalions will become regiments, the regiments will become
divisions, that the old cockade will be retrieved from the dirt, that the old flags will once again
be borne aloft, that finally when we face our Maker on the day of the Last Judgment, as we
are ready to do, our redemption will come. Then from our bones and from our graves the
voice of the only court of justice qualified to pass judgment on us will speak. For it is not you,
Gentlemen, who are passing judgment upon us, it is the eternal tribunal of history which is
sitting in judgment and will pronounce its verdict on the charges which have been made
against us. I know what your verdict will be. But that other court will not ask: "Did you or did
you not commit high treason?" That other court will pass judgment upon us, upon the
Quartermaster General of the old army, on his officers and men who as Germans wanted the
best for their fellow Germans and their fatherland, who were willing to fight and to die. Even
if you find us guilty a thousand times, the Goddess of the eternal tribunal of history will smile
and tear up the Prosecutor's indictment and the verdict of this court; for she will pronounce us
innocent.

Adolf Hitler - speech in Schleiz, Thuringia

January 18, 1927

My fellow Germans !

(jjf do not know whether all meetings here are as well attended, but I hardly think so.
.JJ Why have you come here today in greater numbers than perhaps you would have
v_ done on another occasion? Simply because an election is under discussion? No, not
at all. You are well aware that elections have taken place for decades and you expect that
there will be more elections in the coming years. In previous years they have never
completely satisfied you, and in the coming decades you will not be satisfied by the elections
either. Nor have you come here in the hope that I will read out a long recipe for a cure.

You yourselves do not expect the promises made by the election speakers to be kept.
You have long since ceased to believe in magic cures. What is really decided through an
election of this kind? You know how things are today. Here in Thuringia, too, there is no
reason to expect that a new view of the world (Weltanschauung) will take over. The
likelihood is that once again coalitions will have to be formed, either on the right or the left or
at the centre. The various partners in such a coalition jealously ensure that the middle-of-the
road politics remain intact, that if possible no one obtains complete power, and instead the
previous general line is continued. For example, you know yourselves the kind of decisions
which are made in the German Federal Parliament (Reichstag) today. The German Federal
Parliament is not a sovereign institution. It can prescribe or decide nothing other than what we
have been ordered to do in order to fulfill the terms of the peace treaties.

To me the situation of the German nation today seems like that of a sick person. I know
that people on various sides often say, "Why do you constantly say that we are sick!" People
have said to us: "Daily life goes on as it always did; this "sick person", as you can see, eats
day after day, works day in and day out; how can you say that this person is sick?!" But the
question is not whether a nation is still alive and the economy functioning. Just because a
person eats and works does not mean that he is fit. The most reliable criterion is how that
persons himself feels. He can tell whether he is fit or ill. It is precisely the same in the life of
nations. Nations are often sick for long periods - often centuries - yet individual members of
the nations cannot fully understand the nature of the sickness.

A few days ago I was in Eisenach and stood on top of the Wartburg, where a great
German once translated the Bible. At that time the world was also sick, sick for centuries.
Many people tried to apply remedies - in vain. Until finally a powerful figure came along, a
great man who attacked the root cause of the sickness of his time. He initiated a movement
which would not have removed human suffering but which pointed the way to a new direction
which was decisive.

It is precisely the same today. No one will claim that the German nation is healthy. It is
sick and this feeling of sickness motivates our entire nation today. Some people, it is true, feel
well. There are individuals who thrive precisely when the nation is sick, people whose well-
being is an indirect proof of the general crisis. This crisis will always be twofold in nature. It
is not only a material crisis, it is above all a spiritual, ethical and moral crisis, even if most

people are unwilling to believe this because they merely experience the material crisis. This
could not exist if there were not a spiritual crisis. This applies particularly to our time.

This is the reason why you have come here. In this room there are supporters and
opponents of our movement. The supporters came to hear their leader, the opponents came in
order to hear just for once the leader of this movement. However, someone who strongly
believes in an idea - a religious idea, for example - does not go to listen if someone is
preaching a different idea. If I am firmly rooted in my own faith then I have absolutely no
interest in another. You have come here, although you probably are not conscious of this,
because you are dissatisfied with what has existed in the past. Neither the man on the right nor
the man on the left is satisfied.

I do not want to divide the German nation into little parties but instead into two broad
halves. The one half consists of those who consciously describe themselves as national. The
other half consists of those who just as consciously call themselves international. On the one
side the national middle class (Burgertum), and on the other side the international proletariat.
Within these groups there is constant movement in one direction or the other. Why? Because
people are not completely satisfied with the achievements of their political direction. Instead
individuals sometimes have the feeling that the direction to which they belong has failed. So
within the large group they move somewhat more to the left or a little more to the right, and
look around and think that in the next camp things can get better than they were.

What really proves whether an idea is right or wrong? The real proof of the correctness
of an idea is not whether people believe it, but whether it succeeds, i.e. whether the goal of the
program which is proposed is achieved. So we can apply the following test: If a group of
people join together to achieve a specific goal, this group is not victorious at the moment
when it obtains power but at the moment when it achieves its goal with the aid of that power.
Today there is another theory, the one on which our state is based. According to this a
political campaign can be considered successful when it has gained control of the

power within the state. If, however, we apply this test, then you can judge how little
success the two groups we are considering have had in achieving their goals. Naturally the
individual on the one side can shout "Hurrah!", and on the other side can shout "Down with
you!". But the question is not who can shout loudest but who has achieved their goal? The
answer to this question is easy because both groups held political power.

What was the political goal of the group on the right? Please ignore petty day-to-day
goals such as pay raises for teachers, or increases to civil servants' pensions etc. The political
goal of the right in our nation was in broad terms as follows: "We want to establish a great,
powerful German Reich, a Reich which has power and greatness, a Reich with strength. We
want to ensure complete freedom for this Reich through unlimited cultivation of a sense of
national honor and national pride and by maximum development of the nation's strength to
defend itself. We want our nation to achieve its place in the sun and to retain it. A national
Reich, externally powerful and internally free." When you recall this goal today and compare
it with reality, you have to admit that it has not been achieved. We will discuss the reasons for
this later. The fact is that Germany did not retain its power, its strength, its size. The internal
structure of the state was not preserved. The German defense organism, the source of the
nation's strength, was not retained. Nor was the final and most important goal achieved! On
the contrary! Of 30 million adult men and women, fifteen million flatly reject the national
ideal. They say: "We are international, we want nothing to do with the national ideal."

It is not as if we were once close to the goal, or as if we were on the march towards the
goal. From decade to decade you on the right have moved further and further away from your
goal, and today you are further than ever from it. And you have grown old during this process.
At the age of sixty you can no longer hope to fight a battle with fate which at the age of thirty
or forty you lost. This generation has failed and blundered and leaves the stage of world
history ingloriously! It received a great Reich from its fathers and has shamefully squandered
its inheritance. I will speak later about the excuses which are offered. For the moment I
merely want to establish that the political goal of the right has not been achieved.

And the left? Its goal was the establishment of a world-wide coalition of states with a
proletarian form of government - that is to say states which are completely free of militarism
and of capitalism - and the establishment of a new world built on the corpses of the
downtrodden anti-socialist states. And here again if you disregard all explanations and
interpretations and concern yourselves purely with the bare truth, then, my friends on the left,
you must admit that your real objective has also not been achieved. The world is more divided
than ever before. What people call the League of Nations is a pathetic structure, as pathetic as
probably our old German Reich before 1871. World history take its course ignoring this so-
called League of Nations as if it did not exist. The states are arming themselves day after day.
Militarism has not been abolished, and capitalism has not been abolished either and has
become instead the dominant world power. Are the developments which we see in Germany
by any chance the victory of socialism? So here, too, it is understandable if a person is
discontent. His newspaper can tell him about day to day events etc. Yet he cannot help
sometimes saying to himself that the whole struggle has been in vain! Today an army of
unemployed separates us from genuine social well-being. And this army is growing larger
rather than smaller.

It is the feeling that something is not right which brings you here. When there is a need
to overcome a crisis which cannot be cured by small-scale measures, when circumstances
which affect an entire nation must be remedied and thus require the application of large-scale
measures, the first requirement is that we understand how things got the way they are. We live
in a time which in small ways is great and genial but in broad terms has been a miserable
failure. That is the reason why I am criticized for not concerning myself with day to day
problems. To me worrying about day to day problems is as if, when someone is seriously ill,
your sole concern is whether to feed him his soup with a silver or a golden spoon.

We want to seek out the really major causes of the sickness. Let me return to the group
on the right and the group on the left. Why did those on the right not achieve their goal? There
are a number of reasons. Don't expect me to concern myself with the petty excuses. If a great
movement completely loses power and if the opposite of what it wants takes place, then you
cannot say that this or that person is responsible. You do not lose a state because someone
made a mistake. And don't imagine that those international Jew boys can overthrow a really
healthy state. When a state suddenly collapses as our Reich did, this state must already have
been be hollow within, even if many people refuse to recognize this. The collapse of the
efforts by the right has nothing to do with individual petty errors. Mistakes will occur both on
the winning and the losing side.

The one reason which the right gives for its failure is that the German middle
class(Burgertum) made the big mistake of not maintaining its hold on power and instead
surrendered it. If a person surrenders power which he has, only to recognize later that this
was a fatal error, he passes judgment on himself. It is impossible to maintain a position of

dominance from a position of weakness. But in the long run a position of dominance is not
maintained with mechanical weapons, machines guns, hand grenades etc. The absolute
monarchy in Germany recognized this. In principle its view, "l'etat, c'est moi", was right.
Why? Because everybody was still convinced that, for example, the man who then ruled over
the Prussian Reich was unselfish, was a hero, because everyone was convinced: "I am ruled
over sensibly and this indirectly benefits me."

The second reason is the simplest. When I talk to national politicians today and I say to
them: "Please admit that you have failed; fifteen million people are no longer interested in the
national ideal and that is the most dreadful thing conceivable", they reply: "Yes, but look at
these people, they are scum. Just go down and mix with these people, they are not worth
talking to." There is only one response to this. If it is true that fifteen million people
consciously reject the national ideal because they are morally bad, because they are riff-raff,
scum, scoundrels, what is the point of any further political activity? Well, with what do the
gentlemen on the right intend to save Germany? With their fragmented and divided middle
class? No, under these circumstances there is no value in continuing the struggle, it is
pointless. Fate has simply spoken, i.e. our nation is destined for destruction. But then why not
have the courage to go before the nation and say, even if one does not wish to admit that one
has failed: "Under these circumstances we have no further interest in politics! There is no
point in engaging in politics any longer!" Nevertheless these gentlemen come before you
again and say: "Give us your votes!".

However, it is not true that fifteen million people are not national because they are
morally bad. You see, I cannot judge a nation by the situation which prevails at this moment.
Naturally it is simpler and easier to explain that fifteen million people are scum than to admit
that you are making a mistake or have represented an idea in the wrong way. They say the
people are worthless. Why worthless? I cannot measure a person's worth in terms of his
wealth or his birth, or things like that. All that means nothing, is not a measure of worth. If
today I were to remove a good-for-nothing who is born wealthy I would do the nation no
harm, but I would if I removed a craftsman or an intellectual who conscientiously does his
duty. The value of a person depends on the value which his labour creates. It is not by his own
volition that a person becomes a thinker, musician, great inventor etc. This is not the result of
his individual will but rather a higher nature endows him with this disposition at birth. A
person may be praised because he is a genius; his abilities are, however, of no importance if
he cannot make them serve everyone. He can just as well be a brilliant criminal, good-for-
nothing, or as we say in Bavaria, a"Schwabinger". They are people who live in a suburb of
Munich, a very special kind of person; with a few exceptions the females are recognizable by
their very short hair and the males by their very long hair. These brilliant characters from
whose midst now and then brilliant statesmen like Kurt Eisner emerge - if they did not exist
the world would lose nothing. On the other hand, if I were to remove any street cleaner who
conscientiously sweeps his square meter of street, I would have to replace him with another
street sweeper. We should judge people according to the abilities with which nature has
endowed them and which they use for the benefit of the community. This criterion excludes
the accidental factor of high or low birth and gives a person the freedom to forge his own
reputation. Even the most insignificant person, if he honestly carries out the work he is given
so as to serve the national community (Volksgemeinschaft), can be replaced by another, but
the community needs his services. If I apply this criterion I cannot say that the fifteen million
people on the left are worthless. You cannot simply remove them, you would have to replace
them. Some of them may be worthless but the first measure of value speaks for the fifteen
million. Anything invented by the mind requires many pairs of hands if it is to be used in the

real world. The national community needs them. It cannot exist without them. In our country
these hands are no less valuable than anywhere else. German industry could not have begun to
celebrate its triumphs if it did not have the German worker. The industrialist would be
astonished if he had to work with others rather than German workers. He would not want to
work with others. He is very well aware of the value of the German worker.

The second criterion of value: People should be measured firstly by the work which
they perform for their nation and secondly by their general character. It is not shouting hurrah
but the willingness to subordinate their personal interest to those of the community, to those
of the state, to subordinate their ego to the interest of all others which demonstrate their
character. There are people who are full of assurances that they are ready to sacrifice
themselves for the sake of the community at large. They do everything out of sympathy for
their fellow members of the human race. Others fight the most momentous battles at a table
full of beer bottles. Their ability to make sacrifices remains theoretical.

There is, however, a practical test and this test is war. That great test when the iron
Goddess of Fate approaches the individual and asks him: "Are you ready now to sacrifice
yourself for others, yes or no?" Pretences are not the deciding factor then, or deception, no,
pretences disappear and all that remains is the naked human as he really is. One fellow was
torn away from his comfortable middle class life which until then had provided him with a
living and shown him the art and science of the German nation. And Fate also put this
question to the other fellow, who until then had not shared in the good things of life, who had
spent his life in miserable poverty, in crowded slum tenements, twelve, fourteen or sixteen to
a couple of rooms, yes, five or even ten to a little hole. One day Fate removed the man from
his previous environment. Then came the hours which did not seem to him like the most
precious and the most inspiring but in fact the most horrible in his entire life. He was
constantly plagued by the thought: "Will you stick it out or not?". Those hours of temptation
when a voice called out to him: "Man, save yourself, you will not survive, just like the
others!" Then temptation had to be overcome; then his sense of duty asserted itself: "You
cannot do that, that is shameful."

Meanwhile those at home thought that the boys out there were full of enthusiasm and
ready to put their lives on the line jubilantly. Those were the hours when Fate applied its test -
to the German working man as well. No German army could have celebrated a victory if
beside the General had not stood the German grenadier. The millions who owned nothing for
which they could have fought, they were the objects of the second test. They did their duty as
if the entire fate of the fatherland depended on them alone, and in so doing they passed the
test to the everlasting fame of the broad masses of our People.

With this before our eyes it cannot be said that the German People are worthless, are
evil. If this had been the case Germany would have collapsed in the first three weeks. Today
the German People have nothing in which to believe and hence turn this way and that
thoughtlessly and weak. And there is a reason for this: How can the German People have faith
in those weak individuals who are watching and have watched as Germany suffered harm in
the most humiliating fashion? How can it regard them as the protectors of their interests?
These men have heaped too much guilt upon themselves for the German people to ignore this.
Believe me, if I were not a National Socialist, I could never join the ranks of the middle class
(biirgerlich) parties, because I loath big talk which is merely an empty facade; I hate the kind
of cowardice which avoids making decisions; I hate the half-hearted attitude which was
shown before, during and after the war.

The reasons given by the left are just as faulty as those of the right. The first big excuse
is:"Yes, we were stupid to seize power alone.". Well, that is your own fault! And the second:
When you say to a leader on the left, 'What use are your international and Marxist ideas,
fifteen million people reject them?", the only answer you get is that the fifteen million people
are simply worthless and useless, and that they should have decapitated them. Here I have to
say the same as I did earlier about the other side. How do you measure a person's value? It is
determined by the person's value for the community. Can the professional class, the
intellectual laborers, (Geistesarbeiter) really be called worthless? Certainly not! There are
thousands and thousands of pairs of hands at work in a factory from which a locomotive
finally emerges. But do not forget that before their work began it was the engineers who
designed the machine, there were the chemists who made the alloys. You cannot say today:
"Out with the engineer; he is not a member of our party, so off with his head!" If it was a
question of only three or four you could do that, but with fifteen million people that is
impossible. If millions of working people did not supply their strength to implement ideas
which originate in the brains of others, if those brains did not constantly supply all the
millions of pairs of hands with the plans, the human race would be unable to progress from its
original state. Our brain and hands have collaborated to create the healthy organism in which
we all participate and of which we all are a part today.

And the second criterion, that of character? You cannot say that all those on the right
are all scum, they have no character. You must not judge the value and the character of the
German professional and middle classes in general on the basis of individual typical slaver-
drivers or exploiters. This would be just as stupid as judging every manual laborer by some
good-for-nothing who crosses one's path. Just as in the army there were officers who forgot
that they had fellow citizens, fellow Germans under their command - if you believe in
metempsychosis you might thing that perhaps they were camel drivers in an earlier existence -
there were also N.C.O.s who had been one of us before their promotion and who were much
worse than those officers.

There is no class in which excessive types are not found. If you merely see the
excessive types, then the hand can cut off the head, or the head the hand, but I cannot imagine
what the rump is supposed to do on its own without hand or head. This is incompatible with
the freedom of the working class. It is important that we not only see the worst but also the
good on the other side. Please do not forget that there have been millions who work with their
brains, inventors, etc., who have created the best things for the human race but who have
nevertheless died penniless, and that today there are still people who, for example, take on the
most dangerous mission in the service of science. Why does someone engage in cancer
research for a decade until he is perhaps infected himself? Not because he wants to exploit
others, but because he is one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have the interest of
the community at heart ....

International Marxism is rejected by fifteen million people, because fifteen million
minds are too intelligent not to know that the condition it seeks is impossible to achieve, just
as impossible as it was in Russia - other than in theory.

The German socialist has been taught to believe that he can only be international, and he
has been taught that there exist only other human beings. That defies all experience and is an
insult to their own existence. It is easy for anyone to say that a person is a person, just as a
dog is a dog no matter whether it is a dachshund or a greyhound. A person is a person,

whether New Zealander or German, English or Zulu. However, they differ just as much as
one breed of dogs from another.

You know, it is really unbelievable that it was possible to preach this insanity of
internationalism to millions of people and people believed in this idea; incredible that the Jew
who has been in our midst for thousands of years and yet remained a Jew, has managed to
persuade millions of us that race is completely unimportant, and yet for him race is all-
important. What would that really mean, - that race does not matter? That would mean that if
today I were to remove the Germans from here and take them to Central Africa and brought
the Negro here, things would look the same as if the Germans were here. The Negro would
create just as cultured a state. Do not imagine that the jazz band would have created [the]
culture which we have today! If we look around, everything we see here has been produced
by the collaboration of intellectual and physical labor for centuries. Where do these inventors
come from? Do you believe that the human race has a single invention which was created by a
Negro? Not one. Even the most primitive jobs which he has performed, he took over from the
white race. If you train him long enough, he can play a Wagner opera on the piano. But that
demonstrates the skill of the trainer rather than the ability of the Negro. It is only now that
they are beginning to civilize the Negro. And that applies to every aspect of the question.
Certainly a Negro can dust a light bulb today but he cannot invent one.

There are fields in which various races were active for centuries. Wherever the Aryan
goes there is culture; if he leaves, it gradually disappears; and if he returns after two thousand
years to somewhere where culture has perhaps been replaced by a desert, he will restore
culture. Culture is inseparably linked with people, that is to say with certain people. If you
take them away in the long run nothing is left. You say that does not matter, a person is a
person. The automobile is the great future means of transport. Who invented it? You say that
first there was the engineer Daimler and then there was an engineer Benz. Certainly they were
the inventors of the high-speed motor. There are hundreds of inventors in the field of
electricity thousands and thousands of inventions. Amongst thousands of inventors there is
not a single Jew, not a single one. If you go into the factory and go through the work halls and
look at the endless huge machines and then look at the workers - there, too, no Jews. But if
you go into a shop in Berlin on the Kurfurstendamm, then you do not see a single non-Jew in
it. Some people invent, others work and others then sell what has been produced. The most
important thing is inventing, and the second most valuable activity is producing the article,
and the easiest thing is then selling what has been made, and that is the work of the Jew. The
reason why today he has no culture of his own, no state of his own, has to do with the fact that
for thousands of years he has avoided any productive work. He has not been persecuted
because he did not perform productive work, but because he demanded unproductive interest
charges. He always only bought, sold and sold again, and our ancestors forbade that: 'You do
not work our soil, therefore you have no right to buy it either".

Tens of thousands of Protestants were driven out of my native land, for ever. And so
they packed their bundle of belongings and they went to East Prussia and worked, or went
overseas. Those who were persecuted in this manner began to work over there, took up the
struggle with the wild animals, set up farms, and after them the people with spades always
followed until the continent was conquered. And when everything was done, our friend came.
Don't tell me that he would not have been allowed to come earlier, and do not say he could
have withstood the climate. He can withstand the climate everywhere. It is only work that he
cannot stand. That is the only reason why he did not go. Believe me, the same people who had
managed to make almost the entire world serve their purposes could have created a state for

themselves anywhere. The world would have been happy, grateful, but they had absolutely no
desire to do this. . . .

Believe me, you will never achieve national reconciliation on the basis of the present
parties. This reconciliation is what National Socialism seeks to achieve. Our national ideal is
identical with our social ideal. We are National Socialists, that is to say what we understand
by the word nation is not one class, nor one economic group; the nation is for us the collective
term for all people who speak our language and possess our blood. We see no possibility for
pride in the nation if there is a well-fed group of entrepreneurs and behind them the starving
and exhausted working people of our nation. National pride is possible only if intellectual and
manual laborers, well fed and with a decent standard of living, can live side by side in
harmony. We want to build the foundation for a new view of the world (Weltanschauung) in
which greatness attaches only to the person who sacrifices himself out of passionate devotion
to his entire People. We are convinced that no one in the world will give us anything for
nothing. No one else is furthering our cause, we alone must forge our own future. Within our
nation lies the source of our entire strength. If our nation falls we shall all fall with it. We
cannot prosper if our nation is destroyed. Our nation and our state shall prosper so that each
individual in it can live.

We are not pacifists, for we know that the father of all things is combat and struggle.
We see that race is of supreme importance to the life of our nation as well as character, the
basis of which must be responsibility toward our People. We are absolutely convinced that
every decision requires responsibility. That is why we are at odds with the entire world, that is
why we are considered subversive and why we are prohibited from speaking, and why we are
silenced, because we want to restore the health of our entire German nation and to cure it
from this cursed sickness of fragmentation.

Adolf Hitler - speech at Nuremberg

August 21, 1927

ur fellow party member Rosenberg began his speech by saying that it is critical
| for a nation that its territory correspond to its population. As he put it so well:

"The nation needs space." How well we know that the fulfillment of this
sentence has guided and determined the fate of our nation for many centuries. We know
further that, save for a relatively short period of German history, we have not succeeded in the
task. The question confronts us today as insistently as ever: No government, of whatever kind,
can long escape dealing with it. Feeding a nation of 62 million means not only maintaining
our agricultural productivity, but enlarging it to meet the needs of a growing population. This
is true in many areas. We National Socialists maintain that industrial production is not the
most important in terms of the future of the European peoples. In coming decades it will be
increasingly difficult to increase production. It will reach a dead end as the governments that
presently do not pay great heed to industrial production over time give themselves to
industrialization.

These governments will not be able to meet their own needs with their population.
Difficulties in industrial production will inevitably develop, made more serious because they
will affect not only one state, but a large number of states in Europe. Increasing competition
will naturally force these states to use ever sharper weapons until one day the sharpest
economic weapons will give way to the sharpness of the sword; that is, when a healthy nation
faces the last either-or, and despite the greatest diligence cannot withstand the competition, it
will reach for the sword because the question of life is always the problem about which life
turns. It is a question of power.

The first way to satisfy this need, the adjustment of territory to population, is the most
natural, healthy and long-lasting. We must however conclude when considering this first or
second way that the foundation is power, always power. Power is also a part of economic
struggles. Power is the prerequisite to earth and soil. We can see that today. Even the
sorrowful effort to adjust the population to the available territory by encouraging the
emigration of new generations requires power, even more today as states hermetically seal
themselves from the immigration of uncomfortable elements. The more economic difficulties
increase, the more immigration will be seen as a burden. The so-called workers' states seal
themselves off more than others as a way of building a protective wall against cheap labor.
The newcomer after all must be either cheaper or better. Here too one comes to the conclusion
that maintaining this way of supporting the population requires power.

When we examine the concept of power more closely, we see that power has three
factors: First, in the numerical size of the population itself. This form of power is no longer
present in Germany.

62 million people who seem to hold together are no longer a power factor in a world in
which groups with 400 million are increasingly active, nations for whom their population is
their major tool of economic policy.

If numbers themselves are no longer a power factor, the second factor is territory. This
too is no longer a power factor for us, even seeming laughable when one can fly across our

German territory in a mere four hours. That is no longer an amount of territory that provides
its own defense, as is the case with Russia. Its size alone is a means of security. If the first two
sources of power, population and territory, are inadequate, there remains always the third, that
which rests in the inner strength of a people. A nation can do astounding things when it
carries this power in its own internal values. When, however, we examine the German people,
we must to our horror see that this last power factor is no longer present.

What is the nature of a nation's internal power? Three things are involved: First, a
people has intrinsic value in its race. That is the primal value. A people that has the best blood
but does not understand it, squandering it, receives no protection from its intrinsic value. And
the purity of blood means nothing if the nation can be persuaded of the absurdity that its blood
is worthless. Such a deepest value can be present, but not recognized. Individual people today
are placed in large groups that no longer enable them to see this value. To the contrary, their
program almost claims that there is no value in blood. They see race as completely
insignificant.

Second, internal power depends, aside from the value of blood, on the abilities that such
a nation still has. A nation cannot be called impotent as long as it is able to produce the minds
that are necessary to solve the problems crying out for solution. We can measure the greatness
of a people by the minds it produces. That too is a value, but only when it is recognized as a
value. If a nation has the ability to produce great minds a thousand times over, but has no
appreciation for the value of these minds and excludes them from its political life, these great
men are of no use. It can therefore collapse, in the best case perhaps passing on its inventions
and ideas to the minds of other nations, teaching these nations, but no longer is it a nation
called to lead itself.

The third value hidden within a nation is the drive to self assertion. A people that has
lost this has almost given up its place in the world, in which each living creature owes its
existence only to the eternal striving to rise higher. If a nation today proclaims the theory that
it will find happiness in lasting peace, and attempts to live according to that theory, it will one
day inevitably succumb to this most basic form of cowardice. Pacifism is the clearest form of
cowardice, possessing no willingness to fight for anything at all.

The same person today who preaches limiting the number of children to the nation
murders others so that he himself may live.

He therefore eliminates the second form of intrinsic strength, namely the possibility of
producing more minds at all. A people that limits the number of its children cannot demand of
fate that it give it great minds from the few children who are born. More likely, such a people
will hatch the most unworthy offspring and will attempt to preserve them at any price. Such a
nation has first born, but no longer any great men.

Truly these three points that form the intrinsic strength of a people are no longer
regarded in Germany. The opposite. As I have said, today one places no value on our blood,
on the intrinsic value of our race, rather apostles proclaim that it is completely irrelevant
whether one is Chinese, Kaffir or Indian. If a nation internalizes such thinking, its own values
are of no use. It has renounced the protection of its values, for they too must be protected and
encouraged. A people that sees its blood as worthless cannot possess the intrinsic will to
withstand the competitive struggles of this world. It needs no great minds, does not even want
them any more. It will inevitably believe that all people are equal in terms of blood, and will

no longer have a need to rise above the others. That is why one needs great minds. It will no
longer desire to rise, and that is why one needs great spirits. Since such peoples no longer
value their race and see themselves as the same as everyone else, and no longer feel the inner
need for happiness or great men, they can no longer struggle, nor do they desire to.

That leads to what the large parties proclaim, namely to a nation that thinks
internationally, follows the path of democracy, rejects struggle and preaches pacifism. A
people that has accepted these three human burdens, that has given up its racial values,
preaches internationalism, that limits its great minds, and has replaced them with the majority,
that is inability in all areas, rejecting the individual mind and praising human brotherhood,
such a people has lost its intrinsic values. Such a people is incapable of policies that could
bring a rising population in line with its territory, or better said: adjust the territory to the
population.

Our party comrade says one must give the people territory. In Germany, unfortunately,
we must first give the territory a people. We see before us today Marxist masses, no longer a
German people.

All this would be in vain if the fundamental values were not there. The only thing we
may be proud of is this: We have this value, we have our blood-building value, the best proof
of which is the great men of world history over the millennia. We have this value of race and
personality. We have a third value: a sense of battle. It is there, it is only buried under a pile of
foreign doctrines. A large and strong party is attempting to prove the opposite, until suddenly
an ordinary military band begins to play. Then the sleeper awakes from his dreams and begins
to feel himself a member of a people that is on the march, and he marches along. That is how
it is today. We only need to show our people the better way. They see: we are marching
already! The German people will come to a knowledge of their intrinsic values when the
systematic organized poisoning of their values is replaced by their systematic organized
defense.

That large international world power infects a part of the people with the ideas of
pacifism to weaken their resistance, and uses another part to attack.

When the German pacifist feels threatened in his practical political activity, he can
suddenly become an anti-pacifist, but only against an opponent of his political thinking. He
can even reach for bloody weapons. But he calls the battle for the life of the entire nation
murder!

This large international power organizes its terror groups by appealing to their lower
instincts, but also reduces their potential resistance through intellectual influence. The
German people have split in two as a result. In a masterful way, Hitler showed how the split
between thinking and action in the politically-minded German citizen or politician leads him
to become a democrat, although he knows that the fate of the world is never determined by
majorities. This dear German citizen knows that for 1900 years after Christ and for many
thousand years before Christ's birth, the world was changed by men, but he now suddenly
believes that history is made by the German National Party's Reichstag delegation, which
finds the greatest wisdom in the majority principle. In so far as the political citizen has
accepted this principle, he has practically given up all hope of victory. The majority, that is
cowardice, is for him decisive. Inability, limited wisdom. In theory the majority decides, but
in reality it is the international Jew that stands behind it.

We deceive ourselves if we believe that the people want to be governed by majorities.
No, you do not know the people. This people does not wish to lose itself in "majorities." It
does not wish to be involved in great plans. It wants a leadership in which it can believe,
nothing more.

The bourgeois world can no longer master these problems. It does not wish for the
elimination of the burdens that weaken our people, The burdens that weaken us are in reality
the cause of the success of those powers that Rosenberg calls the world power without a
territory. Consider the following facts:

62 million people have an impossible amount of land. There are 20 million "too many."
This nation cannot survive in the long term. It must find a way out, which lies neither in the
size of its population nor the amount of its territory. Divided in its energies, it must become
the victim of those we all know to be our masters. Can that change in the coming years? No!

That is the task of our movement. We are not burdened with the vast and wise
experiences of other politicians. We entered political life as soldiers who served at the Front
while we were overcome by miserable little scum at home. That was our first motivation to
enter politics. Nor could we accept the idea that things were as they were, and that we had to
adjust to reality. Hitler then brilliantly described the feelings of Front soldiers to conditions in
the homeland.

There was one place in Germany where there were no class divisions. That was in the
companies at the Front. There were no middle class or proletarian units, only the company.
That was all.

There had to be a way to build this unity at home, and this was clear to them. Why was
it possible at the Front? Because of the enemy! Because one knew the danger that one faced.
If I am to build unity among the people, I must first find a new front, a common enemy so that
everyone knows: We must be united, because this enemy is the enemy of us all. If we are not
united, the entire German people will sink into the abyss.

It was necessary to make clear the relationship of the individual to his people. It first
had to be made clear why he had to feel that relationship. It was the feeling of honor that said
to the individual: I am a member of a people of a certain level, and it would be shameful for
me to aid in this people's downfall. It would be a break in the holiest solidarity with the
members of my own blood.

As I watched the procession today, I thought: Is it not wonderful to have thousands of
men who grew through struggle, who matured in it. It is not the outward patriotism of middle
class citizens. We want to put an end to this silly squandering of the values of blood. We want
to plant responsibility in the people and put an end to the nonsense that leads our people to
spill their blood for fantasies or romantic dreams. We want to teach our people one thing:
Take care that your children do not starve.

If someone says to you that you are an imperialist, ask him: You do not want to be one?
If you say no, then you may never be a father, for he who has a child must always worry
about his daily bread. But if you provide his daily bread, then you are an imperialist.

Our goal must be to form a kernel that will steadily grow, winning energy and strength
for the great goal. To whom heaven has given the majority of decisiveness, it has also given
the right to rule.

Our entire struggle is a battle for the soul of our people. It is further a structure, a
structure consisting of those minds who are the bearers of our worldview and who will be the
foundation of the new state. In November 1918 the old colors were lowered. These colors
have however for us a special significance, not because they were the symbol of the former
state, but because they flew before us during four and a half years of battle. One does not soil
that for which one has fought for for four and one half years. In doing so, one soils only his
own honor. When democracy lowered the old colors it did not soil the lasting fame of the
German army, rather established an eternal monument to its own indecency, a monument that
will live longer than this state. One can lower the colors, but one can not destroy the content
of four and one half years, it is an historical fact. The Republic chose its own colors. With
bitter pain we saw it reach impotently into an earlier period of German history for its colors.
Today it is clear that the Republic could not succeed even in winning the general respect of its
citizens for these colors. Today it only suggests that these colors were once really quite
respectable.

Believe me, if it was possible to set aside the colors of the most glorious war in our
people's history by the stroke of a pen, I admire the faith of those in the present government
who believe that the colors of the current German republic will last for eternity.

Hitler discussed the fact that the German people today lack a national flag. One has
never considered the flag of the leading group of the time to be the symbol of the nation.
There is no symbol today that represents the whole people. The order to see the flag as such a
symbol cannot succeed. One thing however is clear: A movement today in Germany that
fights for the renewal of the people must give its own symbol to this effort, and that is why we
have chosen a new flag that is the symbol of the coming new German Reich: a symbol of
national strength and power joined with the purity of the blood.

Our goal is for this flag to increasingly lose its character as a party flag and grow to be
the German flag of the future. We see this flag is inextricably bound to the renewal of the
nation. May these colors be a witness of how the German people broke its chains of slavery
and won freedom. On that day this flag will be the German national flag.

Today you see thousands behind this flag. Seven years ago there was no one. All these
people marched past us today under this flag with enthusiasm and glowing eyes because they
see in these colors the struggle for the freedom of our people.

With one accord, the whole enormous gathering rose to its feet and greeted Hitler's final
words with thousands of outstretched hands: sentences of brilliant force and majesty, a holy
oath of all National Socialists as this Reich Party Rally were met with constant thundering
shouts of "Heil," rendering some of the words unintelligible. Hitler said:

We National Socialists therefore make the holy promise never to rest in raising the
honor of this flag, making it our symbol of self discipline, obedience, and order. Let it be to us
a symbol of eternal struggle. We see in this flag the victorious sign of freedom and the purity
of our blood. We want this flag to be a symbol of salvation, a sign that faith in these great

possessions is alive in our people. May in the coming years a party rally occur at which five
times as many people march, even if their sacrifice is still greater than ever before!

Adolf Hitler - speech in Munich

September 16, 1930

[excerpt]

(^"his election means that the circle is now complete. And the question at this time is:
xi-what are the aims of this opposition and its leaders?

It is a fight for an idea - a Weltanschhauung: and in the forefront stands a fundamental
principle: Men do not exist for the State, the State exists for men. First and far above all else
stands the idea of the people: the State is a form of organization of this people, and the
meaning and the purpose of the State are through this form of organization to assure the life of
the people. And from this there arises a new mode of thought and thus necessarily a new
political method.

We say: a new mode of thought. Today our whole official political outlook is rooted in
the view that the State must be maintained because the State in itself is the essential thing; we,
on the other hand, maintain that the State in its form has a definite purpose to fulfill and the
moment that it fails to fulfill its purpose the form stands condemned. Above everything stands
the purpose to maintain the nation's life - that is the essential thing and one should not speak
of a law for the protection of the State but for the protection of the nation: it is of this
protection that one must think.... In the place of this rigid formal organization - the State -
must be set the living organism - the people. Then all action is given a new untrammeled
freedom: all the formal fetters which can today be imposed on men become immoral directly
they fail to maintain the people, because that is the highest purpose in life and the aim of all
reasonable thought and action.

If today our action employs among its different weapons that of Parliament, that is not
to say that parliamentary parties exist only for parliamentary ends. For us Parliament is not an
end in itself, but merely a means to an end ... we are not on principle a parliamentary party -
that would be a contradiction of our whole outlook - WE ARE A PARLIAMENTARY
PARTY BY COMPULSION, UNDER CONSTRAINT, AND THAT COMPULSION IS
THE CONSTITUTION. The Constitution compels us to use this means. It does not compel us
to wish for a particular goal, it only prescribes a way - a method, and, I repeat, we follow this
way legally, in accordance with the Constitution: by the way laid down through the
Constitution we advance towards the purposes which we have set before us.

Never can Constitutions determine for all time the content of a purpose, especially when
this content is not identical with the vital rights of a people. If today the Constitution admits
for its protection laws which are headed, Laws for the Protection of the Republic,' then it is
demonstrated that the most which our present Constitution can prescribe is nothing but the
protection and the maintenance of a form, and that does not touch the maintenance of the
nation, of a people. This purpose is therefore free: this is the goal which we proclaim and to
which we shall attain. . .

From blood, authority of personality, and a fighting spirit springs that value which alone
entitles a people to look around with glad hope, and that alone is also the condition for the life
which men then desire. And when that is realized, then that too is realized for which today the

political parties strive: prosperity, happiness of the individual, family-life, etc. First will come
honor and then freedom, and from both of these happiness, prosperity, life: in a word, that
state of things will return which we Germans perhaps dimly saw before the War, when
individuals can once more live with joy in their hearts because life has a meaning and a
purpose, because the close of life is then not in itself the end, since there will be an endless
chain of generations to follow: man will know that what we create will not sink into Hades
but will pass to his children and to his children's children. And so this victory which we have
just won is nothing else than the winning of a new weapon for our fight.... IT IS NOT FOR
SEATS IN PARLIAMENT THAT WE FIGHT, BUT WE WIN SEATS IN PARLIAMENT
FN ORDER THAT ONE DAY WE MAY BE ABLE TO LIBERATE THE GERMAN
PEOPLE....

Do not write on your banners the word 'Victory': today that word shall be uttered for the
last time. Strike through the word 'Victory' and write once more in its place the word which
suits us better - the word 'Fight.'

New Year 's Proclamation to the Party

January 1, 1932

National Socialists!

le twelfth year of our Movement's struggle has come to an end. Thanks to the
colossal loyalty of all our fellow fighters, thanks to their sense of duty and
'sacrifice, the victory march of the National Socialist German Workers' Party can
continue this year as well. We all know one thing: in 1931 our Movement became the largest
party in Germany. Tremendous external victories are visible evidence to all of this fact.

When six and a half million German adults elected 107 of our trusted deputies to the
German Reichstag on September 14, 1930, for the first time the whole world saw rent apart
the web of lies with which the internal growth of our Movement has been outwardly veiled
for years. Even the lies and slander were forced to halt their workings: a victory had been
wrought which lies could not erase. Admittedly, only a few short weeks later, those
professional political perverters of the truth had regained their footing and recovered from the
initial shock to the extent that their brazen old game of lies could begin anew. They made an
attempt to persuade themselves and the world that only a "temporary illness" of the German
Volk could be the cause of our success. The Party - according to them - had reached its climax
and would now plunge into abrupt decline.

Party Comrades! You have witnessed how Fate and the facts have once again proven
our official political prophets to be liars. The year 1931 has pinned victory upon victory to our
National Socialist flags. In spite of the flood of lies, misrepresentations, and slander which I
had predicted, the masses of our adherents have grown enormously in this year's elections.
Germany is in the process of becoming National Socialist at a rapid pace. The elections in
Bremen, Hamburg, Oldenburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Mecklenburg, Hesse, and Wurttemberg have
brought about a continuous increase in the greatness and significance of our Movement.
However, these external victories, no matter how exhilarating they are, would be worthless
were they not ultimately accompanied by a comparable internal growth within the Party.

Party Comrades! You should gauge the magnitude of our Movement's growth by the
following: on September 14, 1930, our Party had 293 000 members. Today, on January 1,
1932, membership has already exceeded the 800 000 mark.

By January 1, 1931, approximately 100 000 men had joined our SA and SS
organizations. Today, on January 1, 1932, there are far more than 300 000. The number of our
adherents already exceeds 15 million!

This is a victory march unparalleled in the history of our Volk.

This numerical growth corresponds to the unique internal expansion of our organization.

Today Bolshevism and its Marxist-Centrist-Democratic helpers are faced with a
gigantic front of awakening Germany!

Were it not for the pact which the Center and the middle classes have entered into with
Marxism as a result of their inner relatedness of character, there would be no red, anti-
Christian Germany today.

Therefore they are the accursed accomplices of Bolshevism.

Just as a figure like Bismarck once rightfully described liberalism as the pacesetter of
Social Democracy, Democracy and the Center are today the pacesetters of Bolshevism and
thus the parties who are mainly to blame for our misfortune. One merely external
demonstration of the greatness of our National Socialist Organization is the establishment of
the "Braunes Haus" as central Reich Office. In February of last year, the move was made
from the offices in 50 Schellingstrasse to the newly acquired building in the Brienner Strasse.
Despite extensions and modifications, today this building is already much too small. A new
building is on the rise, another is in the planning stages, and yet another structure neighboring
the Braunes Haus has been occupied since December. Not until 1931 was it possible to
enlarge Organization Department II.

This has led not only to the increased conquest of the worker in the city, but also to the
winning of the peasant.

The National Socialist German Workers' Party is a party not only of city dwellers;
today it is also already the largest German peasants' party.

Its policy of balancing and reconciling the individual ranks of life, of unifying all
Germans for the great political lifework of our Volk, impresses its mark more strongly upon
its own composition with each passing month.

The inner stability of our Movement and the absolute Tightness of the thoughts as well
as the foundations of its organization revealed themselves perhaps most clearly when called
upon to overcome all of our adversaries' attempts, by way of internal disturbances, to
fragment the party of German resurrection they so abhor.

The rejoicing with which our enemies welcomed every apparent indication of inner
rebellion in our Movement was just as great as their bitter disappointment: the Party has come
out of every test stronger than before. The year 1931 is the most convincing evidence of all!

National Socialists! Today you see this evolution clearly behind you. May you set your
sights from there on the future. The time is approaching when the world will face a decision
which comes about only once in millenniums.

The bourgeois parties view what happens in the world through their own eyes. Small
and shortsighted as they are, they suppose the manifestations of the environment to be powers
similar to their own. Even now, they have not yet recognized in Bolshevism the destruction of
all human cultures but perceive it to be a perhaps still "interesting experiment of a new desire
on the part of the State." They are totally unaware that today a thousand-year-old culture is
being shaken to its very foundations; they have no conception of the fact that, if Bolshevism
ultimately triumphs, it will not merely mean that a few miserable bourgeois governments will
go to the devil, but that irreplaceable historic traditions will come to an end as well. Yes, and
that furthermore a turning point in the development of humanity will inevitably be the end
result in the worst meaning of the word. Bolshevism's triumph means not only the end of
today's peoples, their states, their cultures, and their economies; it also means the end of their

religions! This world shock will result not in freedom, but in barbarous tyranny on the one
hand and a materialistic brutalization of man on the other!

As so often before in the history of peoples, Germany's fate this time will again be of
decisive importance for the fate of all. If the flags of the red stultification and brutalization of
humanity (Menschheitsverdummung undMenschheitsvertierung) should ever be hoisted over
Germany, the rest of the world will share the same lot.

For seventy years, disreputable bourgeois parties in Germany have exhausted the power
of the national idea and, to a large degree, left our Volk at the mercy of Marxism. For seventy
years the parties of democracy and, in their wake, the strictly Christian Center Party, have
helped to corrupt our Volk by practicing sodomy with the forerunners of Bolshevism.

Today they are clinging with a reprehensible thirst for power to a regime which would
no longer belong to them if their own significance alone were any measure.

Were the National Socialist Movement to cease existing today as a counterbalance to
Marxism, Germany would be Bolshevist tomorrow.

But what is Fate's will? If there was any deeper meaning underlying the events of last
year, then it can only be that it is Fate's own will that a clear line is drawn.

We can see how the verse from the Bible which recognizes both the hot and the cold but
damns the lukewarm to being spewn forth is coming to fruition in our Volk. The middle will
be smashed and shattered. The compromises will come to an end. Today international
Bolshevism is faced with the German nation under National Socialism. The Almighty Himself
is creating, out of His own merciful will, the prerequisite for the salvation of our Volk; in
allowing the lukewarm middle to be destroyed, He intends to give us the triumph.

National Socialists! We now enter upon the new year in the conviction that it will be the
most difficult year of the struggle of our Movement.

A glance behind us shows countless sacrifices. As long as we comprised a small party,
we were entitled to perceive in our own sacrifices the magnitude of the obligation for our
actions. Now that Providence has granted us such great successes, the extent of our duties to
Germany lies in the magnitude of the sacrifices which our Volk has taken on in the course of
its historical evolution.

We are fighting not for the victory of one party, but rather for the preservation of our
Volk.

In view of the magnitude of these sacrifices and this task, we cannot expect that the way
which lies ahead will be easy!

Men of the National Socialist Movement! SA and SS Comrades! I repeat the demands I
made last year:

Men of my National Socialist Movement! I am not demanding that you do anything
illegal, I am not requiring anything which would bring your conscience in conflict with the

law, but I do demand that you follow me loyally on the path which the law permits and which
my conscience and my insight require, and that you join your fate with my fate.

It will be a purgatory of slander, lies, misrepresentations, terror, and suppression
through which our Movement must pass!

Our opponent fears retaliation for the inordinate number of crimes he has perpetrated
upon our Volk. Hence no trick or deed is beyond him in his determination to prevent the
victory of our Movement.

National Socialists! Expect it from the very beginning, and nothing will surprise you.
Then you will overcome everything.

The path from seven men to fifteen million was more difficult than the path from fifteen
million to the German nation will be.

As we once had the audacity to believe in our gigantic goal and its realization, let us
today have the courage, like a knight without fear and without reproach, to withstand hell,
death and the devil and choose the way to victory and freedom. National Socialists! Each of
you shall be proud to be attacked by our adversaries in 1932!

He who is not attacked by the Marxist falsifiers and the Centrist liars and their press is
useless to Germany and worth nothing to our Volk!

Struggle through to the realization that our enemies today are left with only one means
of fighting: lying; and gauge from this the necessity of a community welded together for
better or worse.

Comrades! Let us march into this new year as fighters with the goal of leaving it as
victors.

Long live our glorious National Socialist Combat Movement!

Long live our eternally beloved German Volk!

Deutschland erwache!

Munich, January 1, 1932 Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler addressed the Industry Club in Dilsseldorf

January 27, 1932

(jjf f today the National Socialist Movement is regarded in many circles in Germany as

.JJ being opposed to the business world, I believe the reason for this lies in the fact that

v. we formerly adopted a position in respect to the events which determined the

development of today's situation differing from that of the other organizations which play a

significant role in public life. Today our views still differ in many points from those of our

opponents.

It is our conviction that the misery is due not only and not primarily to general world
events, for this would more or less exclude, from the very onset, the possibility that an
individual people might better its situation. Were it true that the German misery is necessarily
due solely to a so-called world crisis-a world crisis on the course of which we as Volk
naturally can exercise no influence or only an insignificant amount of influence -then
Germany's future could only be described as hopeless. How should a state of affairs change
for which no one bears the blame? In my opinion, the view that the world crisis alone is to
blame leads, in the long run, to a dangerous pessimism. It is only natural that the more the
factors gaiving rise to a certain state of affairs are removed from an individual's sphere of
influence, the more that individual will despair of ever being able to change this state of
affairs. The gradual result will perforce be a certain lethargy, an indifference, and ultimately,
perhaps despair.

For I believe it is of primary importance to break with the view that our fate is
determined by the world. It is not true that the final cause of our misery lies in a world crisis,
in a world catastrophe; what is true is that we have slipped into a general crisis because
certain mistakes were made here from the very beginning. I cannot say: "The general view is
that the Peace Treaty of Versailles is the cause of our misfortune." What is the Peace Treaty
of Versailles other than the work of man? It is not something which has been burdened or
imposed upon us by Providence. It is the work of man for which, quite naturally, once again
men will have to be held responsible, with their merits and with their faults. If this were not
so, how would man ever be able to do away with this work at all? It is my opinion that there is
nothing which has been caused by the will of man which cannot in turn be changed by another
man's will.

Both the Peace Treaty of Versailles as well as all of the consequences of this Treaty are
the result of a policy which was perhaps regarded as being correct, at least in the enemy
nations, some fifteen, fourteen or thirteen years ago; seen from our vantage point, it can only
be seen as fatal, even though it was still supported by millions of Germans a mere ten years or
less ago and only today stands revealed in its utter impossibility. Hence, I must conclude that
there is some implicit blame for these events in Germany as well if I want to believe at all that
the German Volk can still exercise some influence toward changing these conditions.

It is, in my opinion, also false to claim that today's life in Germany is determined solely
by considerations of foreign policy; that the primacy of foreign policy today controls the
whole of our domestic life. It is naturally possible for a people to reach a point where factors
of foreign policy exclusively influence and determine its domestic life. But let no one say that

this circumstance is either natural or was intended from the onset. Rather, the important thing
is for a people to lay the necessary groundwork to alter this state of affairs.

If anyone tells me that foreign politics are the foremost determining factor in the life of
a people, then I must first ask: What do you mean by "politics"? There are a number of
definitions: Frederick the Great said: "Politics is the art of serving one's State with every
means." Bismarck stated: "Politics is the art of the possible"-based upon the concept that
everything within the realm of possibility should be done to serve the State and, in the
subsequent transition to the concept of nationalities, the nation. Yet another considers that this
service to the people can be effected by peaceful as well as military means, for Clausewitz
said: "War is the continuation of politics, albeit with different means." Conversely,
Clemenceau believed that peace today is nothing other than the continuation of the battle and
the pursuit of the battle aim, although, once again, with different means. In short: politics is
and can be nothing other than the realization of the vital interests of a people and the practical
waging of its life -battle with all means available. Thus it is quite clear that this life-battle has
its initial starting point in the people itself, and that at the same time the people is the object,
the value in and of itself, which is to be preserved. All of the functions of this body politic
should ultimately fulfill only one purpose: securing the preservation of this body in the future.
Therefore I can neither say that foreign policy is of primary significance, nor that economic
policy has priority. Naturally a people will require an economy in order to live. But this
economy is also only one of the functions the body politic requires for its existence. Primarily,
however, the most essential thing is the starting point itself, namely the people in and of itself.

One should not say that foreign politics are of prime importance in determining the path
of a people; rather, one must say that, first of all, it is the people, with its own intrinsic value,
with its organization and training in this value, which marks out its own path within the world
around it. I should not say that foreign policy is capable of changing the value of the people to
any significant extent; rather, I must say: each people must wage the battle to safeguard its
own interests and can only wage a battle which corresponds to its innermost nature, its value,
its capabilities, the quality of its organization, etc. Naturally, foreign policies will in turn
exercise their retrospective influence. We ourselves have experienced it: what a difference
there is in the reactions of the individual peoples to foreign policies! The reaction is
determined by the inner state of mind, by the inner value, by the inner disposition, by the
capabilities of each individual people. Thus I can ascertain that, even if the basic value of a
nation is constant, shifts in the inner organization of the life of this nation can suffice to give
rise to a change in its attitude to the external world.

Therefore it would be wrong to claim that foreign policy shapes a people; rather, the
peoples control their relations to the rest of the world respective to the forces inherent in them
and respective to their education in the utilization of these forces. We can be quite certain
that, had a different Germany stood in the place of today's Germany, the attitude to the rest of
the world would also have been appreciably different. However, presumably the influences of
the rest of the world would also have manifested themselves in other ways. Denial of this
would mean that Germany's destiny could no longer be changed, no matter which regime is
governing in Germany. The roots underlying such a belief and the explanation for it are
obvious: assertions that the destiny of a people is determined solely by foreign countries have
always been the excuses of bad governments. Weak and bad governments throughout the ages
have made use of this argument in order to excuse their own failures or those of their
predecessors; the failures of their entire tradition -bound, predetermined course; and in order to
claim from the very beginning: no one else in my position could have done otherwise. For

what could anyone do with his people against conditions which are firmly established and
rooted in the rest of the world, with a people which is then naturally regarded as a fixed value
as well?

My view in this respect is another: I believe that three factors essentially influence the
political life of a people.

First of all, the inner value of a people, which is passed down from one generation to the
next as inheritance and genotype-a value which only suffers any change when the carrier of
this inheritance, the people itself, changes in terms of its genetic composition. It is a certain
fact that individual character traits, individual virtues and individual vices always recur in
peoples as long as their inner nature, their genetic composition, does not undergo any
essential change. I can see the virtues and vices of our German Volk in the Roman authors
just as clearly as I perceive them today. This inner value, which determines the life of the
people, can be destroyed by nothing save a genetic change in its very substance. An illogical
organization of life or an unreasonable education may interfere with this value temporarily.
But in this case, merely its outward effects are obstructed, while the basic value in and of
itself continues to exist as it has before. This is the great source of all hope for the recovery of
a people. Here lies the justification for believing that a people which, in the course of
thousands of years, has exhibited countless examples of the highest inner value cannot
suddenly have lost this inborn, genetically transmitted value from one day to the next; rather,
that this people will one day again bring this value into play. Were this not the case, the belief
of millions of people in a better future-the mystic hope for a new Germany-would be
incomprehensible. It would be incomprehensible how this German Volk, depleted from
eighteen to thirteen and a half million people at the end of the Thirty Years' War, could regain
the hope of rising again by means of industriousness and efficiency, how hundreds of
thousands and finally millions belonging to this utterly crushed Volk could once again be
seized by the yearning for a new form of government. It would be inconceivable, were there
not a certain unconscious conviction in all of these individuals, that a value was present in and
of itself which manifested itself time and time again throughout the millenniums, perhaps
repressed and hindered in its effectiveness at times by bad leadership, bad education, bad
organization within the State -but which in the end always struggled its way through-
presenting to the world over and over again the wonderful spectacle of our Volk rising anew.

I said that this value can be corrupted. In particular, however, there are still two other
inwardly related phenomena which we can observe again and again in periods of national
decline.

One of these is the substitution, in democracy, of a levelling, numerical concept for the
value of the individual. The other is the negation of the value of the people, the denial that
there is diversity in the natural abilities, achievements, etc. of the individual peoples. In fact,
each of these two phenomena is mutually dependent upon the other or at least exerts an
influence on the other's development. Internationalism and democracy are inseparable
concepts. It is only logical that democracy, which negates the special value of the individual
within the people and puts in its place a general value, a numerical value, must proceed in this
same way in respect to the life of the peoples, and there it degenerates to internationalism. It is
maintained, in a general sense, that peoples have no innate values; rather, at most, there may
be manifestations of temporary differences as a result of education; but there is no essential
difference in value between Negroes, Arians, Mongolians, and Redskins. This view, which
constitutes the basis of our entire international body of thought today, is so far-reaching in its

consequences that ultimately a Negro will be able to preside at the sessions of the League of
Nations; it leads perforce in turn to the further consequence that, within a single people, in the
same way, any differences between the value of individual members of this people will be
particularly disputed. In this way, of course, any existing special ability, any existing basic
value of a people can, for all practical purposes, be made ineffective. For, with this view, the
greatness of a people is not the sum of all its achievements, but rather ultimately a sum of its
outstanding achievements. Let no one say that the image which is conveyed as the first
impression of the culture of mankind is the impression of its overall achievement. This entire
structure of culture, down to its foundations and in each of its building blocks, is nothing
other than the result of creative talent, the achievement of intelligence, and the industriousness
of individuals. The greatest results are the great crowning achievement of individual geniuses
endowed by God; the average results are the achievement of men of average ability; and the
total result is undoubtedly a product of the application of human working power towards the
exploitation of the creations of geniuses and talented men. But this naturally means that, when
the capable minds of a nation-who are always in the minority-are given a value equal with all
the others, this must result in subjugating the genius to the majority, in subjecting the ability
and the value of the individual to the majority, a process which is mistakenly called the rule of
the people. This is not the rule of the people, but in fact the rule of stupidity, of mediocrity, of
half- measures, of cowardice, of weakness, and of inadequacy. The rule of the people is rather
when a people allows itself to be governed and led in all areas of life by its most capable
individuals who are born for the task, than to allow all areas of life to be administered by a
majority which, by its very nature, is alien to these areas.

In this way, however, democracy will, in practice, result in cancelling out the real values
of a people. This is one of the reasons why peoples with a great past slowly forfeit their
former status from the very point onwards when they submit to unlimited democratic rule by
the masses; for the existing and potentially outstanding achievements of the individual in all
areas of life are then practically ruled ineffective, thanks to being subjected to rape by
numbers. But this means that such a people will gradually lose not only its cultural and not
only its economical significance, but also its significance as a whole. In a relatively short
time, it will no longer represent to the rest of the world the value it once did. And this will
necessarily be accompanied by a shift in its ability to safeguard its interests in respect to the
rest of the world. It is not inconsequential whether a people embarks on a period such as, for
instance, 1807 to 1813 under the leadership of the most capable individuals who are granted
extraordinary authority, or whether, in a similar period, such as 1918 to 1921, it marches
under the leadership of parliamentary mass madness. In the one case, one observes that the
inner rebuilding of the life of the nation has led to the highest achievements which, though
certainly founded in the value of the people, are only then capable of being manifested; while
in the other case even the value which already exists no longer manifests itself. Yes, things
can proceed to the point when an unquestionably industrious people, in whose lifetime
apparently very few changes have taken place-particularly in respect to the efforts of individu-
als-loses so much in terms of its overall achievement that this achievement is no longer of any
significance to the rest of the world.

But there is yet another factor involved: namely, the view that, having already denied
the value of the individual and the particular value of a people, life on this planet must not
necessarily be maintained through conflict-an opinion which, perhaps, might be of no import
had it only become implanted in individual minds, but which has appalling consequences
because it is slowly poisoning an entire people. It is not as though these types of general
changes in the Weltanschauung are confined to the surface or involve purely intellectual

processes. No, in the long run they affect the very roots, influencing all of the expressions of a
people's life.

I may cite an example: you, Gentlemen, are of the opinion that the construction of the
German economy must be based upon the concept of private property. Then again, you can
only maintain the idea of private property if it appears to be somehow founded in logic. This
concept must draw its ethical justification from the insight that it is a necessity dictated by
nature. It cannot, for instance, be motivated solely by the claim: "It has been this way until
now, and therefore it must continue this way." For-in periods of great upheavals in the State,
of movements of peoples, and of transitions in thought-institutions, systems, etc. cannot only
remain unaffected because they have existed previously in the same form. It is characteristic
of all truly great revolutionary epochs in the history of mankind that they pass over, with
unparalleled ease, forms which have become sacred only with time or which only apparently
become sacred with time. Thus it is necessary to justify these types of traditional forms which
are to be preserved in such a manner that they can be regarded as absolutely necessary, and as
logical and right. In that case, I must say one thing: private property is only morally and
ethically justifiable if I assume that men's achievements are different. Only then can I say
that, because men's achievements are different, the results of those achievements are also
different. But if the results of men's achievements are different, then it is expedient to leave
the administration of these achievements to men to an appropriate degree. It would be
illogical to assign the administration of the fruits of an achievement connected to one
individual to the next best, less capable individual or the whole, for these latter individuals
have already proven, by the simple fact that they themselves have not performed the
achievement, that they cannot be capable of administering the resulting product. Therefore
one must admit that, from an economic point of view, men are not equally valuable, not
equally significant in every area from the onset. Having admitted this, it would be madness to
claim that, while there are doubtless differences in value in the economic sector, there are
none in the political sector! It is nonsense to base economic life on the concept of
achievement, of personal value and thus practically on the authority of the individual, while
denying this authority of the individual in the political sphere and substituting in its place the
law of the greater number-democracy. This will inevitably slowly cause a gulf between the
economic view and the political view which one will attempt to bridge by assimilating the
former to the latter-an attempt which has indeed been made, for this gulf has not remained
pure, empty theory. The concept of the equality of values has meanwhile been raised to a
system not only in the political but also in the economic sector. And not only as an abstract
theory: no, this economic system thrives in gigantic organizations-yes, today it has already
seized the huge territory of an entire State.

I am, however, incapable of regarding two basic ideas as being the possible foundation
for the life of a people for any length of time. If it is correct to assume that human
achievements are different, then it must also be correct that the value of man in respect to the
creation of certain achievements is different. But then it is absurd to attempt to apply this only
in respect to a certain sphere, in the sphere of economy and its leadership, but not in the
sphere of leadership in the life-struggle as a whole, namely in the sphere of politics. Rather it
is only logical that, if I acknowledge the unequivocal recognition of particular achievements
in the sphere of economy as the prerequisite for any higher culture, then politically I must
similarly grant priority to the particular achievement and thus to the authority of the
individual. If, on the other hand, it is asserted-by none other than the economic sphere-that no
particular abilities are required in the political sector, but that absolute uniformity reigns here
in respect to achievement, then one day this same theory will be transferred from politics to

the economy. Political democracy, however, is analogous to Communism in the economic
sector. Today we find ourselves in an age in which these two basic principles are in conflict
with each other on every border and have already penetrated the economy.

One example: the practical activity of life is rooted in the significance of the individual.
This is gradually becoming threatened by the rule of numbers in the economic sector. There
is, however, one organization in the State-the Army- which cannot be democratized in any
way whatsoever without surrendering its very essence. One proof that a Weltanschauung is
weak is when it is inapplicable to all areas of life as a whole. In other words: the Army can
only exist if the absolutely anti-democratic principle of unconditional authority from above
and absolute responsibility from below are maintained, while in contrast, democracy means,
for all practical purposes, complete dependency from above and authority from below.
However, the result is that in a State in which the whole of political life -beginning with the
community and ending with the Reichstag- is built upon the concept of democracy, the Army
must gradually become an alien body, and an alien body which is bound to be perceived as an
alien body, To democracy, it is an alien idea, an alien Weltanschauung which inspires this
body. An internal struggle between the advocates of democracy and the advocates of authority
is the inevitable consequence, a struggle we are now experiencing in Germany.

One cannot expect that this struggle will suddenly come to a standstill. No, the opposite
is the case: this struggle will continue until the nation ultimately becomes immersed in either
internationalism or democracy and thus falls prey to a complete dissolution; or else creates a
new and logical form for its inner life. It follows that education in pacifism must of necessity
affect even the most insignificant of individual lives. The concept of pacifism is logical if I
proceed on the basis of a general equality between peoples and human beings. For what other
sense could there be in struggling? The concept of pacifism, translated into practical reality
and in all sectors, must slowly lead to the destruction of the drive for competition, of the
ambition to bring forth particular achievements of all types. I cannot say: in politics we will
become pacifists, will rid ourselves of the notion that it is necessary to protect life by means
of conflict-but in economics we wish to remain keen competitors. If I eliminate the idea of
struggle as such, it is of no significance that it still exists in isolated areas. In the end, political
decisions will determine individual achievements. You can build up the best economy for
fifty years on the basis of the principle of authority, on the basis of the principle of
achievement; you can construct factories for fifty years; you can amass wealth for fifty years-
and in three years of inadequate political decisions you can destroy all the results of these fifty
years. (Chorus of assent). This is only natural, because political decisions spring from a
different root than constructive economic decisions.

In summary, I see two principles starkly opposed: the principle of democracy which,
wherever its practical results are evident, is the principle of destruction. And the principle of
the authority of the individual, which I would like to call the principle of achievement,
because everything which mankind has achieved until now and all human cultures are only
conceivable given the rule of this principle.

The value of a people in and of itself, the type of inner organization through which this
value is to be made effective, and the type of education are the starting points for the political
action of a people and thus the foundations for the results of this action.

Do not go so far as to believe that a people which has deprived itself of its values to the
extent the German Volk has would have fared better in former centuries, whether there was a

world crisis or not. When a people chooses the path which we have chosen-practically for the
past thirty or thirty-five years, but officially for the past thirteen-then it can end nowhere else
but where Germany is today. The fact that evidence of the crisis has spread throughout almost
the entire world is understandable when one considers that the development of the world has
today progressed to an extent, and mutual relations have been reinforced in a manner, which
seemed scarcely possible fifty, eighty or one hundred years ago. But it would nevertheless be
wrong to believe that this process is only conceivable now, in the year 1932. No, the history
of the world has witnessed similar things more than once before. Whenever particular
relations between peoples have led to situations being created accordingly, the disease of
these peoples has necessarily spread and influenced the overall situation.

It is, of course, easy to say: we prefer to wait until the general situation has changed.
That is impossible. The situation which you see before you today is surely not the
consequence of some revelation of God's will, but the result of human weaknesses, human
errors, human fallacies. It is only natural that, first of all, these causes must be transformed
and thus mankind committed to an internal transformation, before one can count on a change
in the situation.

This follows from a single look at the situation of the world today: we have a number of
nations which have created for themselves an outlook on life based upon their inborn superior
value, which bears no relation to the Lebensraum they inhabit in densely populated areas. We
have the so-called white race, which has, in the course of some thousand years since the
collapse of ancient civilization, established for itself a privileged position in the world. But I
am incapable of comprehending the economically privileged supremacy (Herrenstellung) of
the white race over the rest of the world if I do not view it in the closest of connections to a
political concept of supremacy which has been peculiar to the white race as a natural
phenomenon for many centuries and which it has upheld as such to the outer world. You can
choose any single area, take for example India: England did not acquire India in a lawful and
legitimate manner, but rather without regard to the natives' wishes, views, or declarations of
rights; and she maintained this rule, if necessary, with the most brutal ruthlessness. Just as
Cortes or Pizarro demanded for themselves Central America and the northern states of South
America not on the basis of any legal claim, but from the absolute, inborn feeling of
superiority (Herrengefiihl) of the white race. The settlement of the North American continent
was similarly a consequence not of any higher claim in a democratic or international sense,
but rather of a consciousness of what is right which had its sole roots in the conviction of the
superiority and thus the right of the white race. If I imagine things without this frame of mind
which, in the course of the last three or four centuries of the white race, has conquered the
world, then the fate of this race would in fact be no other than that, for instance, of the
Chinese: an immensely congested mass of people in an extraordinarily restricted territory-
overpopulation with all its inevitable consequences. If Fate allowed the white race to take a
different path, it was because this white race was of the conviction that it had a right to
organize the rest of the world. Regardless of what external disguise this right assumed in a
given case-in reality, it was the exercise of an extraordinarily brutal right to dominate
(Herrenrecht). From this political view there evolved the basis for the economic takeover of
the rest of the world.

A famous Englishman once wrote that the characteristic feature of English policy was
this miraculous marriage of economic acquisitions with political consolidation of power, and
conversely the political expansion of power with immediate economic appropriation: an
interaction which becomes inconceivable the moment one of the two factors is lacking. I

know, however, that the view is held that one can also conquer the world economically. But
this is one of the greatest and most terrible fallacies there are. Let the English confine their
struggle for India to economic means; let England relinquish in full the attitude with which it
once acquired India, an attitude which helped to preserve India for England throughout the
many rebellions and the long and bloody battles in the middle of the last century-and you will
see what happens: the English factories will not hold India, they will come to a standstill
because the spirit of old England, the spirit which once laid the necessary groundwork for
these factories, has been lost!

Today we are confronted with a world situation which is only comprehensible to the
white race if one recognizes as indispensable the marriage between the concept of domination
in political will and the concept of domination (Herrensinn) in economic activity, a
miraculous consensus which left its mark on the whole of the past century and in the
consequences of which the white peoples have, in part, undergone a remarkable development:
instead of expanding in a territorial sense, instead of exporting human beings, they have
exported goods, have built up a worldwide economic system which manifests itself most
characteristically in the fact that-given that there are different standards of living on this earth-
Europe, and most recently, America as well, have gigantic central world factories in Europe,
and the rest of the world has huge markets and sources of raw materials.

The white race, however, is capable of maintaining its position, practically speaking,
only as long as discrepancies between the standards of living throughout the world remain. If
today you were to give our so-called export markets the same standard of living we have, you
would witness that the privileged position of the white race, which is manifested not only in
the political power of the nation, but also in the economic situation of the individual, can no
longer be maintained.

The various nations have now-in accordance with their innate natural abilities-
safeguarded this privileged position in various ways, perhaps England most ingeniously, for
she has consistently tapped new markets and immediately anchored them in a political sense,
so that it is quite conceivable that Great Britain-assuming its mental outlook remains
unchanged-might develop an economic life more or less independent of the rest of the world.
Other peoples have not attained this goal because they have exhausted their mental powers in
internal w eltanschaulich-f oxmexly religious-battles. During the great period when the world
was partitioned they were developing their capacities internally, and later they attempted to
participate in this world economy; but they have never created their own markets and gained
complete control of these markets.

When Germany, for example, began to establish colonies, the inner conception, this
entirely cool, sober, English concept of colonization, had already been replaced in part by
more or less romantic ideas: the transmission of German culture to the world, the spread of
German civilization-things which the English viewed as far-removed during the colonial
period. Thus our practical results failed to meet our expectations, aside from the fact that the
objects of our endeavors were, in part, no longer capable of fulfilling our lofty and romantic
hopes, particularly since the white race has slowly increased to such numerical proportions
that the preservation of these gigantic population figures appears guaranteed only if the
economic world market potential is secured. Thus, in reality, one part of the world is
absolutely dependent upon maintaining a situation which we Germans as democrats and
members of the international League of Nations have long since rejected in an intellectual
sense. The result is obvious: competition forced the European peoples to an ever- increasing

improvement in production, and the increasing improvement in production led to a steady
economizing in the labor force. As long as the tapping of new international markets kept pace,
the men who had been dispensed with in agriculture and later in the trades could be
transferred to the new lines of production without further ado, so that we now perceive the
characteristic features of the last century in that primarily men were being eliminated in
agriculture and entering the trades; later, in the trades themselves, more and more people fell
victim to rationalization in the methods of production and then, in turn, found new
opportunities to earn a livelihood in an expansion of the branches of production. But this
process was conceivable only as long as there was a constant increase in available sales
potential, a potential which had to be as large as the increase in production.

The situation in the world today can be summed up as follows: Germany, England,
France, and also-for non-imperative reasons-the American Union and a whole series of
smaller States are industrial nations dependent upon the export business. After the end of the
War, all of these peoples were confronted with a world market practically empty of
commodities. Then the industrial and manufacturing methods, having become particularly
ingenious during the War in a scientific and theoretical sense, pounced on this great void and
began to restructure the factories, invest their capital and, as the inevitable consequence of the
invested capital, to increase production to the utmost. This process was able to work for two,
three, four, five years. It could have continued to function if new markets had been created
which corresponded to the rapid increase and improvement in production and its methods-a
matter of primary importance, for the rationalization of the economy leads, from the
beginning of the rationalization of basic economy, to a reduction in the human work force, a
reduction which is only useful if the workers who have been dispensed with can easily be
transferred in turn to other branches of industry. But we see that since the World War there
has been no substantial increase in the number of markets; quite the opposite, they have
shrunken in number because the number of exporting nations has slowly been increasing; for
a host of former sales markets have themselves become industrialized. We see, however, a
new major exporter-the American Union, which today has perhaps not manifested itself ail-
powerfully in all sectors, but certainly in individual areas-can count on advantages in
production which we in Europe do not and cannot possibly possess.

The last and most serious phenomenon we observe is the fact that, parallel to the
gradual growth of confusion in white European thinking, a Weltanschauung has seized hold
of a part of Europe and a large part of Asia which threatens to actually tear this continent out
of the framework of international economic relations-a phenomenon which German statesmen
even today pass over with an astonishing lack of regard. For instance when I hear a speech
which stresses: "It is necessary that the German Volk stand together!", then I am forced to
ask: does one really believe that this standing together today is nothing but a question of good
political will? Do they fail to see that a gulf has already grown in our midst, a gulf which is
not the mere figment of some people's imaginations, but rather whose spiritual exponent
today forms the basis for one of the largest world powers? That Bolshevism is not only a mob
ranting about in a few streets in Germany, but a world view which is on the point of
subjecting to its rule the entire continent of Asia and which today, in the form of a State,
stretches almost from our eastern border to Vladivostok?

Here the matter is presented as though these were only the purely intellectual problems
of isolated visionaries or ill-disposed individuals. No, a Weltanschauung has conquered a
State and, starting from there, will slowly shatter the whole world and bring about its collapse.
Bolshevism will, if its advance is not halted, expose the world to a transformation as complete

as the one Christianity once effected. In 300 years people will no longer say: this is a new idea
in production. In 300 years people might already know that it is almost a new religion, though
based upon other principles! In 300 years, if this movement continues to develop, people will
see in Lenin not only a revolutionary of the year 1917, but the founder of a new world
doctrine, worshipped perhaps like Buddha. It is not true that this gigantic phenomenon could
simply, let us say, be thought away in today's world. It is reality, and must of necessity
destroy and overthrow one of the basic requirements for our continued existence as the white
race. We observe the stages of this process: first of all, a decline in the level of culture and,
with it, of receptivity; a decline in the level of humanity as a whole and thus the breaking off
of all relations to other nations; then the construction of an independent system of production
with the aid of the crutches of capitalist economy. As the final stage, an independent system
of production to the complete exclusion of the other countries, which, as a matter of course,
will one day be faced along their borders with the most serious economic competitor.

I know very well that gentlemen in the Reich Ministry of Defense and gentlemen in
German industry will counter: we do not believe that the Soviets will ever be able to build up
an industry genuinely capable of competition. Gentlemen, they would never be able to build it
solely from Russian, from Bolshevist natural resources. But this industry will be built from
the resources of the white peoples themselves. It is absurd to say: it is not possible to build an
industry in Russia using the forces of other peoples-it was once possible to equip an industry
in Bohemia with the help of Germans. And one more thing: the Russia of old was already in
possession of a certain amount of industry.

If people go on to argue that the methods of production will never by any means be able
to keep pace with us, then do not forget that the standard of living will more than compensate
for any advantages we have due to our methods of production.

We shall, in any event, witness the following development: Bolshevism will-if today's
way of thinking in Europe and America remains as it is-slowly spread throughout Asia.
Whether it takes thirty or fifty years is of no consequence at all, considering it is a question of
Weltanschauungen. Christianity did not begin to assert itself throughout the whole of southern
Europe until 300 years after Christ, and 700 years later it had taken hold of northern Europe
as well. Weltanschauungen of this fundamental nature can manifest their unrestricted capacity
for conquest even five hundred years later if they are not broken in the beginning by the
natural instinct of self-preservation of other peoples. But even if this process continues for
only thirty, forty or fifty years and our frame of mind remains unchanged, then, Gentlemen,
one will not be able to say: what does that have to do with our economy?!

Gentlemen, the development is obvious. The crisis is very serious. It forces us to
economize in every sector. The most natural reduction is always made in human labor. The
industries will of necessity rationalize more and more; that means increasing their
productivity and reducing the numbers of their work forces. But when these people can no
longer be given places in newly tapped professional fields, in newly tapped industries, this
means that, in time, three people's accounts must be opened: the first is agriculture. Once
people were economized from this basic account for the second account. This second account
was the trades, and later industrial production. Now, in turn, one is eliminating men from this
second account and pushing them into the third account: unemployment. In doing so, one is
putting on a disgraceful show of glossing over reality. It can be best put by saying that those
without a means of existence are simply regarded as "non-existent," and thus superfluous. The
characteristic feature of our European nations is that gradually a certain percentage of the

population is proven superfluous in terms of statistics. Now, it is quite clear that the requisite
maintenance of this third account is a burden thrust upon the other two. This increases the tax
pressure, which in turn requires a further rationalization of the methods of production, further
economization, a further increase in the third account.

In addition, there is the battle for world markets being waged today by all European
nations with the consequence that this battle naturally affects prices, which again leads to a
new wave of economizing. The final result, which can hardly be foreseen today will, in any
case, be decisive for the future or the downfall of the white race and, above all, of the peoples
who are greatly hampered in establishing inner economic autarky due to their territorial
limitations. The further consequence will be that, for instance, England will reorganize her
domestic market and erect customs barriers for its protection, high ones today and even higher
ones tomorrow, and all other peoples who are in any way capable of doing so will take the
same steps.

In this sense, all those who claim that Germany's hopeless position is particularly
indicative of our distress today are right. At the same time, however, they are wrong in
seeking the distress only in external causes, for this position is of course not only the result of
external developments, but of our inner, I would almost say, aberration, our inner
disintegration, our inner decay.

Let no one say that we National Socialists do not understand the necessity of dealing
with momentary damage. But one thing is certain: every type of distress has some root or
another. Thus it does not suffice-regardless, Gentlemen, of what emergency decrees the
Government issues today-when I doctor around on the periphery of this distress and attempt
from time to time to cut away the cancerous tumor; rather, I must penetrate to the agent, the
origins. In this connection it is of relatively little significance whether this generative cause is
discovered or eliminated today or tomorrow; the essential thing is that, without its
elimination, no cure is possible. It is wrong to reject a program covering twenty or thirty years
today on the grounds that we cannot wait that long-a tuberculosis patient does not care if the
treatment his physician has recommended to cure his illness lasts three or more years. The
essential thing is that no purely external remedy, even if it is quickly applied and momentarily
alleviates his pain, is capable of eliminating the disease as such. We can observe this in an
absolutely classical form in the consequences of our emergency decrees. Again and again the-
admittedly honest-attempt is made to somehow improve and combat an impossible situation.
You see that every attempt, in its final consequence, leads exactly to the opposite: to an
increase in the very phenomena one is trying to eliminate. In this connection I am willing to
leave out what is, in my opinion, the greatest problem at this moment, a problem which I
would like to describe not only as a purely economic one, but also a volkisch problem in the
truest sense of the word: that of unemployment.

What one sees are only six or seven million people who are not engaged in the process
of production; and one regrets, from a purely economic standpoint, the loss in production
which this causes.

But, Gentlemen, one fails to see the mental, moral, and spiritual effects of this fact. Do
they really believe that such a percentage of the national work force can lie idle for even ten,
twenty, or thirty years without this idleness exercising any mental effect, without it leading
inevitably to a spiritual change? And do they believe that this will have no significance for the
future?

Gentlemen, we know from our own experience that Germany lost the War due to a
mental aberration whose consequences are today evident practically everywhere. Do you
believe that, once seven or eight million people are barred from taking part in the national
process of production for ten or twenty years, these masses can perceive of Bolshevism as
anything but the logical weltanschaulich complement to their actual, practical economic
situation? Do you really think that one can choose to disregard the purely mental side of this
catastrophe without it one day becoming reality, an evil curse following the evil deed?

If the German distress could be alleviated by means of emergency decrees, then all of
the major legislators in the past centuries would have been bunglers; for they attempted, under
similar circumstances, to regenerate the body politic in order that, with the aid of this newly
created source of strength, they might implement new and healing resolutions. What the
current German Government wants is of no significance at all, just as it is of no significance
what the German economy wants or desires. The important thing is to realize that we are
presently once more in a situation which has already previously arisen in the world a number
of times: a number of times in the past, the volume of certain types of production grew to
exceed the parameters of demand. Today we are experiencing the same thing to the greatest
possible degree: if all automobile factories existing in the world now were employed one
hundred percent and working one hundred percent, then one could replace the entire stock of
motor vehicles within four and a half or five years. If all locomotive factories were employed
one hundred percent, one could easily renew all of the locomotive parts in the world within
eight years. If all of the rail factories and rolling mills of the world were employed one
hundred percent, one could, perhaps in ten or fifteen years, lay the entire network of tracks in
the world today once more. This applies to almost all industries. One has achieved such an
increase in productive capacity that the present market potential no longer bears any relation
to capacity. But when Bolshevism as an ideology tears the continent of Asia out of the human
economic community, the prerequisites for the employment of these gigantically developed
industries will no longer exist to nearly the same extent. Then we will find ourselves
industrially in approximately the same stage in which the world has found itself several times
before in other areas. It has happened several times before, for instance, that the tonnage of
sea-going vessels was much larger than the amount of goods requiring carriage. Several times
before certain economic groups have thus been subjected to severe crises. When you read
history and study the ways which have been chosen to rectify this situation, then you will in
short always find one thing: the amount of goods was not adjusted to fit the tonnage, the
tonnage was adjusted to fit the amount of goods-in fact not by voluntary economic resolutions
on the parts of the shipowners, but rather by decisions of power politics. When a politician or
an economist objects and says to me: that may have once been the case between Rome and
Carthage, or between England and Holland or between England and France, but today it is
business that decides; all I can answer is: that is not the spirit which once opened up the world
to the white race, which also opened to us Germans the way into world economy. It was not
the German economy which conquered the world, followed by the evolution of Germany's
power; but in our case, too, it was the power-state which created the basic conditions for
ensuing prosperity in the economy. In my view, it is putting the cart before the horse to
believe today that Germany's position of power can be recovered using business methods
alone instead of realizing that a position of power constitutes the prerequisite for an
improvement in the economic situation as well. That does not mean that the attempt should
not be made today or tomorrow to combat the disease which has seized our economy,
notwithstanding the fact that it is not possible to hit the focus of the disease with the first

blow. But it does mean that each such external solution ignores the root of the problem, the
fact that there is only one basic solution.

It rests upon the realization that the collapse of an economy always has as its forerunner
the collapse of the State and not vice versa; that a prosperous economy cannot subsist if it is
not backed by the protection of a prosperous, powerful State; that there would have been no
Carthaginian economy without a Carthaginian fleet and no Carthaginian trade without the
Carthaginian army; and that, in our modern age-when things get rough and the interests of
peoples clash-it is natural that an economy cannot exist unless the all-powerful, determined
political will of the nation is standing behind it.

Here I would like to enter a protest against those who simply dismiss these facts by
claiming: the Peace Treaty of Versailles is, "in what is almost the general opinion," the cause
of our misfortune. No, this is certainly not "almost the general opinion," but solely the
opinion of those who share the blame for its having been concluded. (Applause)

The Peace Treaty of Versailles is itself nothing but the logical consequence of our
slowly increasing inner, mental confusion and aberration. We happen to find ourselves in an
age in which the world is approaching extraordinarily difficult mental conflicts which will
thoroughly shake it up. I cannot avoid these conflicts by simply shrugging my shoulders in
regret and- without clearly realizing their causes-saying: "What we need is unity!" These
conflicts are not phenomena born merely of the ill will of a few individuals; rather, they are
phenomena ultimately having their deepest roots in the facts of race.

If Bolshevism is spreading in Russia today, then ultimately this Bolshevism is just as
logical for Russia as Czarism was before it. It is a brutal regime ruling over a people which,
were it not led by a brutal government, could in no way be maintained as a State. But if this
world outlook should spread to us as well, we must not forget that our Volk, too, is composed
racially of the most diverse elements, that we thus of necessity must perceive in the slogan
"Proletarians of all countries, unite!" much more than a mere political battle cry. In reality, it
is the expression of the will of men who, in their natures, indeed do possess a certain kinship
with respective peoples of a low level of culture. Our Volk and our State were also once built
up only through the exercise of the absolute Herrenrecht and Herrensinn accruing to the so-
called Nordic people, the Arian race elements which we still possess in our Volk today.
Therefore whether or not we can find our way back to new political strength is only a question
of regenerating the German body politic in accordance with the laws of an iron logic.

The claim that inner weltanschaulich unity is of no significance can only be made by a
man who is a specialist in one area or another and therefore no longer has an eye for the real
living forces which shape the nation-a statesman who never gets out of his office and busies
himself in his bureaucratic ivory tower, in thousands of hours of negotiations and meetings,
with the latest effects of the crisis, without discovering the major causes and with them the
major decisions required for their removal. It is quite clear that, by issuing a decree, I can
easily take a position today on any of the various aspects of public life. But take a look at
what effect this position can have on the practical side of life! There is no organization
existing in the world today which does not have as its foundation a certain unanimity of
purpose. One cannot conceive of an organization which does not view certain basic questions
which arise repeatedly as requiring an absolutely unanimous recognition, affirmation or
solution. This applies even to the smallest organization there is-the family. No matter how
competent a man or a woman may be, if certain, necessary, basic questions are not affirmed

equally by both in their common union, then their competence will not be able to prevent their
union from becoming a source of perpetual strife and their external life from ultimately failing
due to this inner discord. Man can only fully develop the force of his activities in one
direction, and the main question for the people as a whole is the direction in which this force
is to be guided. Should it direct itself outwards, or should it turn inwards? It must turn inward
at that point when the attitude toward a certain problem is not completely unanimous;
otherwise the individual will already have become the enemy of his neighbor, who effectively
constitutes his environment. It is not a matter of indifference whether or not an association has
and recognizes a set of basic principles. No, the decisive factor in judging any human
organization is the strength of the inner relation, a strength which is based upon the
recognition of certain guiding general principles.

In the life of peoples, external strength is determined by the strength of the internal
organization, but the strength of the internal organization in turn depends upon the stability of
common views on certain basic matters. What good is it if a government issues a decree to
save the economy when that nation, as a living thing, itself has two completely different
attitudes towards the economy? One part says: "The prerequisite of the economy is private
property," while the other claims: "Private property is theft." Fifty percent believe in one
principle, fifty percent in the other. You may object by saying that these views are pure
theory-no, this theory is of necessity the basis for practice. Was this view mere theory when,
in November 1918, the Revolution broke out as a consequence and shattered Germany? Was
that a completely insignificant theory which, above all, was of no interest to the economy?
No, Gentlemen! I believe that such views must, if they are not clarified, inevitably tear apart
the body politic, for they are not simply confined to theory. The Government talks about the
"vaterlandisch way of thinking," but what does "vaterlandsch way of thinking" mean? Ask
the German nation! One part supports it, while the other declares: "Vaterland is an inane
bourgeois tradition and nothing more." The Government says: "The State must be saved." The
State? Fifty percent regard the State as a necessity, but the sole desire of the other fifty
percent is to crush the State. They are conscious of their role as a vanguard not only of an
alien national attitude and an alien national concept, but also of an alien national will. I cannot
say that this is only based on theory. It is not mere theory when fifty percent of a people at the
most are willing to fight, if necessary, for the symbolic colors, while fifty percent have
hoisted a different flag representing a State which is not their own but lies outside the borders
of their own State.

"The Government will seek to improve the morals of the German Volk." Which morals,
Gentlemen? Even morals must have some basis. What appears to you to be moral appears
immoral to others, and what seems immoral to you is for others a new morality. The State
says, for instance: "Thieves must be punished." But countless members of the nation counter:
"One must punish the owners, for ownership itself comprises theft." The thief is glorified
more than anything else. One half of the nation says: "Traitors must be punished," but the
other half holds: "Treason is a duty." One half says: "The nation must be defended with
courage," and the other half regards courage as idiotic. One half says: "The basis of our
morality is religious life," and the other half sneers: "The concept of a God does not exist in
reality. Religions are merely the opium of the people."

Do not ever think that once a people has been seized by these conflicts of
Weltanschauung one can simply circumvent them by means of emergency decrees, that one
can delude oneself into believing that there is no need to take a stand on them because they
involve things which concern neither the economy, nor administrative life, nor cultural life!

Gentlemen, these conflicts affect the power and the strength of the nation as a whole! How
can a people actually constitute a factor of any significance abroad when, in the final analysis,
fifty percent are Bolshevist-oriented and fifty percent nationalistic or anti- Bolshevist-
oriented? It is conceivable that Germany can be turned into a Bolshevist State-it will be a
catastrophe-but it is conceivable. It is also conceivable that Germany can be turned into a
national State. But it is inconceivable that a strong and healthy Germany can be created if fifty
percent of its members are Bolshevist-oriented and fifty percent are nationalist-oriented! We
cannot get around solving this problem!

If today's Government declares: "But we are industrious, we are working, this last
emergency decree cost us so and so many hundreds of hours of sessions" (amusement), then I
do not doubt what they say. That does not, however, mean that the nation will become even
the slightest bit stronger or more stable; the process of inner decay will continue unceasingly
on its inevitable course. But the consequence to which this path will finally lead is something
you then again can see only if you take a very large mental leap: once, as the first prerequisite
for the organization of our Volk on a large scale, Germany had a weltanschaulich foundation
in our religion, Christianity. When this weltanschaulich foundation was shaken, we see how
the strength of the nation turned away from external things and toward the internal conflicts,
for the nature of man forces him, as a matter of inner necessity, to seek a new common
foundation at that point at which the common weltanschaulich foundation is lost or attacked.
These are then the great ages of civil wars, religious wars, etc.- conflicts and confusions in
which either a new weltanschaulich platform can be found and thereupon a nation erected
anew, a nation which can turn its strength outwards, or in which a people becomes split and
falls into ruin. In Germany, this process ran its course in an absolutely classical form. The
religious conflicts meant a withdrawal of the entire German strength inwards, an internal
absorbing and exhausting of strength and thus automatically a gradual increase in an attitude
of no-longer-reacting to major world events in foreign countries, while these meet with a
completely passive people, because at the same time this people has inner tensions which
urgently require a solution.

It is incorrect to say: world politics and the world situation alone determined Germany's
fate in the sixteenth century. No, our internal situation at that time played a helping role in
shaping the image of the world which later caused us so much suffering: the partitioning of
the world without Germany.

In a second, really magnificant example from history, this process is repeated: in order
to replace the lacking religious unity-for both religions are finally frozen fast, neither is now
capable of overcoming the other-a new platform is found: the new concept of the State, first
of legitimist character and later slowly passing to an age of the national principle and colored
by it. It is on this new platform that Germany once more unites; and, piece by piece, with this
unification process, a Reich which had fallen into decline as a result of the old confusions
automatically and once more lastingly increases its strength in the external world. This
increase in strength led to those days in August 1914 which we had the proud good fortune of
experiencing firsthand. A nation which apparently had no internal differences and thus was
able to channel its entire strength outwards! And in scarcely four and a half years, we see the
process reverting. The inner differences become visible, they slowly begin to grow, and
gradually the external strength is crippled. The inner conflict once more takes on urgency; in
the end comes the collapse of November 1918. In reality, this means nothing other than that
the German nation was once more investing its entire strength in inner conflicts-externally, it
was relapsing into complete lethargy and powerlessness.

But it would be quite mistaken to believe that this process was confined only to those
days in November 1918. The weltanschaulich disintegration set in at the very time when
Bismarck was powerfully uniting Germany. Citizens and proletarians began to take the place
of men from Prussia, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Saxony, Baden, etc. In place of a many-facetted
disintegration, which is overcome politically, the classes begin to split, leading ultimately to
the same result. For the remarkable feature of the former disintegration of the State was that
Bavarians would, under certain circumstances, tend to cooperate more readily with non-
Germans than with Prussians. That means that relations with the outside were regarded as
more feasible than relations with one's own German Volksgenossen. Exactly the same result
is coming about now by means of the class division. Once again a mass of millions has
ceremoniously declared that it is more willing to take up relations to men and organizations
who think similarly and have a similar outlook but are members of a foreign people, than to
enter into relations with men of its own Volk who are of the same blood but think differently.
This is the only explanation for the fact that today you can see the red flag with the sickle and
hammer-the flag of an alien sovereign power- waving over Germany; the fact that there are
millions of people to whom one cannot say: "You, too, are Germans-you, too, must defend
Germany!" If these men were willing to do this as in 1914, they would be compelled to
renounce their Weltanschauung; for it is thoroughly absurd to believe that Marxism would
have been converted to the national cause in 1914. No! The German worker, with an intuitive
realization, turned away from Marxism in 1914 and, contrary to his leaders, found his way to
the nation. (Lively applause) Marxism itself, as concept and idea, knows no German nation,
knows no national State, but knows only the Internationale!

I can thus state one fact today: no matter what the legislature does- particularly by
means of decrees and most of all by means of emergency decrees- if Germany is unable to
master this inner division of outlook and Weltanschauung, then no amount of legislative
measures will be able to prevent the ruin of the German nation. Indeed, do not believe,
Gentlemen, that in ages in which peoples have fallen into ruin as demonstrated by history, the
governments were not governing! At the same time Rome was slowly disintegrating, the
governments were certainly active. Yes, I would almost like to say that the rapidity with
which a legislative machine functions seems to me to be almost proof of the disintegration of
a Volkskorper (body politic). One merely attempts to veil the existing inner division and the
degree of disintegration from the outside world by means of the legislative rotary machine.
Today the situation is no different. And do not believe that any government would ever have
admitted that its work was not conducive toward saving the nation. Fach of them naturally
protested against the view that its activities were not absolutely necessary; each was
convinced that no one else could have done it better than itself. You will never, in the history
of the world, find a general who, no matter how high the number of battles on his debit
account, was not convinced that no one could have done better than he. But the essential fact
will always remain that, in the end, it is not immaterial in the least whether the Herzog von
Braunschweig or Gneisenau is commanding the army; whether a system confines its attempts
to save the nation to emergency decrees or whether a new mental outlook inspires a Volk
inwardly and leads it back to life, back to being a vital, living factor, and away from being the
dead object of legislative machinery. It is not immaterial whether, in the future, you simply
attempt to bring the most obvious manifestations of the crisis under control in Germany by
means of a legislation more or less trimmed with a border of constitutionality, or whether you
lead the nation itself back to internal strength.

And when this system objects and says to me that there is no time left for that now-it is
true, meine Herren, that far too much time has been wasted on unproductive work, far too
much time has already been lost. One could have initiated the regeneration process in 1919,
and in the past eleven years Germany would have undergone a different external
development. For it was only possible to impose the Peace Treaty upon us in the form chosen
because at the time it was being drawn up, Germany had totally ceased being a factor of any
weight whatsoever. And the results of this Peace Treaty took on those forms we know and
have experienced only because, in all these years, no Germany with any kind of definite and
perceptible will of its own existed. Thus we are not the victims of the treaties, but rather the
treaties are the consequences of our own mistakes; and I must, if I wish to improve the
situation at all, first change the value of the nation again. Above all, I must recognize one
thing: it is not the primacy of foreign politics which can determine our actions at home, but
rather the character of our actions at home that determines the character of our successes in
foreign policy, yes, and even our very objectives.

I may cite two examples of this from history: firstly, Bismarck's idea of a conflict
between Prussia and the House of Habsburg, the construction of a new Empire by ousting
Austria, an idea which never would have become reality had not-before the attempt was made
to put it into action-the instrument been created with which the political objectives could have
practically been turned into reality. It was not the political situation which forced Prussia to
decide to reorganize its Army; rather, the reorganization of the Prussian Army which
Bismarck far-sightedly carried through against the resistance of parliamentary madness first
made the political situation possible which came to an end in Koniggratz and established in
Versailles the Empire which, because it gradually came to be founded on other principles, was
later once more destroyed and partitioned in the very same chamber at Versailles.

And vice versa: if today a German government attempts, along the lines of Bismarck's
ideas, to take the path of that age and, perhaps as forerunner of a German policy of
unification, attempts to establish a new Zollverein, a customs union, then formulating this aim
is not the important thing, but rather the important thing is what preparations one undertakes
in order to make the implementation of this aim possible. I cannot formulate an aim which,
supported by the press campaign of one's own papers, is understood throughout the world to
be a political aim of utmost importance unless I secure for myself the political means which
are absolutely essential for the implementation of this type of plan.

And the political means-today I can no longer view them as limited-can lie only in the
reorganization of an army. Ultimately, it is completely irrelevant whether Germany has an
army 100 000 or 200 000 or 300 000 strong; the main thing is whether Germany has eight
million reservists whom it can transfer to the army without heading toward the same
weltanschaulich catastrophe as that of 1918.

The essential thing is the formation of a political will of the entire nation; this is the
starting point for political action. If this formation of will is guaranteed in the sense of a
willingness to commit oneself to some national objective or other, then a government that is
supported by this formation of will can also choose those paths which one day may lead to
success. However, if this formation of will does not take place, every power in the world will
test the chances of such an undertaking on the strength of the means at its disposal to back it.
And one will surely be aware of the fact that a government which rouses itself to exhibit such
a great national show externally but is, internally, dependent upon the shifting forces of
Marxist-Democratic-Centrist party views, will never be capable of really fighting to carry

through this plan to the very last. Let no one say: this is simply a case in which all are
standing together as one man. This standing together of all as one man can only then be
attained when all share one single opinion. The phrase "March divided, fight united" exists
only in terms of the army because in an army with a single supreme command, the order to
march divided is followed in exactly the same way as the order to fight united, because both
stem from one and the same root of command. But I cannot simply allow armies to run
around side by side as complete strangers and then expect, upon some signal which a high-
and-mighty government deigns to give them, that they will suddenly harmonize wonderfully
and initiate a joint maneuver.

That is impossible! And it is simply impossible for the further reason that, ultimately,
the catastrophe lies not so much in the existence of different points of view, but rather
foremost in the fact of the State's licensing these differences.

If today they wish to hurl the worst accusation at me as a National Socialist, then they
say: "You want to bring about a decision in Germany by violence, and we must oppose that.
You want to one day destroy your political opponents in Germany! We, on the other hand,
stand for the precepts of the Constitution and must thus guarantee all parties their right to
exist." To that I have only one reply: translated into reality, this means: "You have a
company. You must lead this company against the enemy. Within the company there is
complete liberty to form a coalition." Fifty percent of the company have formed a coalition
based upon love and defense of the Vaterland, the other fifty percent based upon a pacifist
Weltanschauung: they reject war as a matter of principle, demand the inviolability of freedom
of conscience, declare it to be the highest and only virtue we have today. But if it does come
to a fight, they want to stand together. But should one man-insisting on freedom of
conscience-desert to the enemy, then the absurd situation would arise where you would have
to place him under arrest and punish him as a deserter, while completely forgetting that you
actually have no right to punish him. A State which allows the view to circulate-with license
from the State-that treason to the Vaterland is a duty; which tolerates that large organizations
calmly state: it will be our task to put a simple stop to any military action in the event of war-
what right does that State have to punish a traitor to the Vaterland? Of course it is only
incidental that such a State itself carries the madness of this view ad absurdum, for the man
who would otherwise have been branded a criminal now will become a martyr for one half of
the nation. Why? Because this same State, which, on the one hand, declares the theory of
treason to one's country an ethical and moral theory and protects it, has the audacity, on the
other, to imprison a person who attempts to transpose this view from the sphere of theory into
practice.

Gentlemen! All this is impossible, completely impossible, if one at all believes that a
people, in order to survive, must direct its strength outwards. But take a look at the situation
today: seven or eight million employed in agriculture; seven or eight million employed in
industry; six or seven million unemployed! Consider that, in all human probability, nothing at
all will change in this respect, and you will be forced to admit that Germany as a whole
cannot survive in the long run-unless, that is, we find our way back to a truly extraordinary,
newly- shaped political strength working from within but having the capacity of making us
effective once more vis-a-vis the outside world.

For it does not matter at all which of the problems of our volkisch life we wish to
attempt to solve: if we wish to maintain our export trade, then here as well the political will of
the nation as a whole will one day have to take a serious stand to prevent us from being thrust

aside by the interests of other peoples. If we wish to build up a new domestic market or if we
wish to solve the problem of our Lebensraum: whatever the case, we will always need the
collective political strength of the nation. Yes, even if we want to be valued merely as allies-
beforehand we must make Germany a political power factor. But that will never be achieved
by bringing a proposal before the Reichstag that negotiations be initiated for procuring a few
heavy batteries, eight or ten tanks, twelve aircraft, or, as far as I'm concerned, even a few
squadrons-that is entirely irrelevant! Throughout the history of peoples, technical weapons
have undergone continual changes. But what had to remain unchanging was the formation of
will. It is the constant factor and the prerequisite for everything else. Should it fail, no number
of weapons can help. On the contrary: if you were to summon the German Volk to a levee en
masse and place weapons at its disposal for this purpose-tomorrow the result would be civil
war, not a fight against the external world. Practical foreign politics can no longer be
implemented with today's body politic. Or do you believe that Bismarck would have been
able to fulfill his historic mission with today's Germany, that the German Empire would have
emerged from this state of mind?

In stating this, I am still a long way from confronting today's system with the claim that
one should, for instance, remain silent and inactive in the face of individual incidents; rather,
my claim is that an ultimate solution is only possible when the internal disintegration in terms
of classes is overcome once more in the future. When I say this, I am not being a pure
theoretician. When I returned to the homeland in 1918, 1 was faced with a situation which I,
just as all the others, could have accepted as a given fact. It is my firm conviction that a large
part of the German nation was of the unequivocal opinion in those November and December
days of 1918, and even in 1919, that were Germany to continue on its path in terms of
domestic policy, it would be heading rapidly towards its downfall in terms of foreign policy.
In other words, the same opinion I held. There was only one difference. At that time I said to
myself: it is not enough to merely recognize that we are ruined; rather, it is also necessary to
comprehend why! And even that is not enough; rather, it is necessary to declare war on this
destructive development and to create the instrument necessary to do so. {Bravo!)

One thing was clear to me: the world of the parties up to that time had shattered
Germany, and Germany was broken by this. It is absurd to believe that the factors whose
existence is inseparably bound up in history with Germany's disintegration can now suddenly
be factors in its recovery. Each organization becomes not only the personification of a certain
spirit; in the end, it even symbolizes a certain tradition. If then, for example, associations or
parties have almost made it a tradition of retreating in the face of Marxism for sixty years, I
do not believe that, after the most horrible defeat, they will suddenly break with a tradition
which has become second nature to them and transform their retreat into an attack; what I do
believe is that the retreat will continue. Yes, one day these associations will go the way of all
organizations which suffer repeated defeats: they will enter pacts with the opponent and
attempt to attain by peaceful methods what could not be won by fighting.

Granted, given a cool and considered view, I did have to say to myself in 1918:
certainly it is a terribly difficult course to present myself to the nation and form a new
organization for myself. Actually, it would naturally be much easier to enter one of the
existing formations and attempt to overcome the inner gulf dividing the nation from there. But
is this at all possible in the existing organizations? Does not each organization ultimately have
in it the spirit and the people who find satisfaction in its program and its struggle? If an
organization has, in the course of sixty years, continually retreated before Marxism and finally
one day simply capitulated like a coward, is it not then necessarily filled with a spirit and with

people who neither understand nor are prepared to take the other path? Is it not so that the
opposite is true, that in such an age of confusion the future will simply consist of once again
sieving through the body politic which has fallen into disorder; that a new political leadership
will crystallize from within the Volk which knows how to take the mass of the nation in its
fist and thereby avoids the mistakes which led to downfall in the past? Of course I had to say
to myself that the struggle would be a terrible one! For I was not so fortunate as to possess a
prominent name; instead, I was nothing but a German soldier, nameless, with a very small
zinc number on my breast. But I came to one realization: if, beginning with the smallest cell, a
new body politic did not form in the nation which could overcome the existing "ferments of
decomposition," then the nation as a whole would never itself be able to experience an
uprising. We have practically already experienced it once. It took more than 150 years until
Prussia, the germ cell of a new Empire, arose out of the old disintegrated Empire to fulfill its
historic mission. And believe me: the question of the inner regeneration of a Volk is no
different in the least. Each idea must recruit its own people. Each idea must step out before
the nation, must win over the fighters it needs from its midst and must tread alone the difficult
path with all its necessary consequences, in order to one day achieve the strength to change
the course of destiny.

Developments have proven that this reasoning was right in the end. For even if there are
many in Germany today who believe that we National Socialists are incapable of constructive
work-they are deceiving themselves! If we did not exist, Germany today would no longer
have a bourgeoisie. The question, "Bolshevism or no Bolshevism" would long have been
decided! Take the weight of our gigantic organization-this greatest organization by far in the
new Germany-off the scales of national events and you will see that, without us, Bolshevism
would already tip the scales now-a fact best evidenced by the attitude which Bolshevism has
toward us. It is a great honor to me when Herr Trotsky calls upon German Communism today
to cooperate with the Social Democratics at any price because National Socialism is to be
regarded as the only real danger to Bolshevism. And it is an even greater honor for me
because in twelve years, starting with nothing at all and in opposition to the overall public
opinion at the time, in opposition to the press, in opposition to capital, in opposition to the
economy, in opposition to the administration, in opposition to the State: in short, in opposition
to everything, we built up our Movement, a Movement which can no longer be eliminated
today, which exists, on which one must have an opinion whether one wants to or not. (Cheers
of approval) And I believe that this opinion actually must be quite clear to anyone who still
believes in a German future. You see before you an organization which does not only preach
the theory of the realizations I characterized as being essential at the beginning of my speech,
but which puts them into practice; an organization filled with the utmost national sentiment,
based on the idea of the absolute authority of leadership in every field, on all levels-the only
party which has, in itself, totally overcome not only the international idea but the democratic
idea as well; which, through its organization, acknowledges only responsibility, command and
obedience and which thus for the first time integrates into the political life of Germany a
phenomenon of millions united in upholding the principle of achievement. An organization
which fills its followers with an unrestrained aggressive spirit (Kampfsinn); for the first time,
an organization which, when a political opponent declares: "We take your behavior to be a
provocation," is not satisfied to suddenly withdraw, but brutally enforces its own will and
hurls back at him: "We are fighting today! We will fight tomorrow! And if you regard our
meeting today as a provocation, then we'll hold another one next week-and will continue until
you have learned that it is not a provocation when the German Germany professes its will!
And if you say, "You may not go out on the streets"-we will go out on the streets in spite of
it! And if you say, "Then we will beat you"-no matter how many sacrifices you force us to

make, this young Germany will always march again, it will one day completely win back the
German streets, the German individual. And when people reproach us for our intolerance, we
are proud of it-yes, we have even made the inexorable decision to exterminate Marxism in
Germany down to its very last root. We made this decision not because we are pugnacious-I,
for one, could imagine a life made up of nicer things than being chased through Germany,
being persecuted by countless decrees, standing constantly with one foot in prison, and having
no right I can call my own in the State. I could imagine a better fate than that of fighting a
battle which, at least in the beginning, was regarded by everyone as a mad chimera. And
lastly, I believe that I also have the capability of taking on some sort of post in the Social
Democratic Party, and one thing is certain: had I placed my capabilities at its service, today I
would presumably even be fit to govern. But for me it was a greater decision to choose a path
along which nothing guided me but my own faith and an indestructible confidence in the
natural powers of our Volk-which are certainly still present-and its significance, which will
one day of necessity once more manifest itself, given the right leadership.

Now a twelve-year struggle lies behind us. We did not wage this battle in purely
theoretical terms or put it into practice only in our own party; rather, we are also willing to
wage it on a large scale at any time. If I reflect back to the time when I founded this
association together with six other unknown men, when I spoke before 11, 20, 30, or 50
people, when, in the space of one year, I had won 64 people over to the Movement, when our
small circle expanded steadily-then I must confess that that which has come about today,
when a stream of millions of German Volksgenossen flows into our Movement, represents
something unique, standing alone in German history. For seventy years the bourgeois parties
have had time to work. Where is the organization which could compare itself to ours? Where
is the organization which could point out, as ours can, that if necessary, it can bring 400 000
men out on the streets, men who carry within them a sense of blind obedience, who follow
every order-as long as it is not against the law? Where is the organization which has achieved
in seventy years what we have achieved in barely twelve-with means which were so
improvised that one would almost have to be ashamed to confess to the opponents how pitiful
the birth and growth of this great Movement once was.

Today we are at the turning-point in German destiny. If the present development
continues, Germany will one day of necessity result in Bolshevist chaos; however, if this
development is brought to an end, our Volk must be sent to a school of iron discipline and
gradually cured from the preconceptions of both camps. A hard lesson, but one which we
cannot avoid!

If one believes that the concepts of "bourgeois" and "proletarian" can be conserved,
then one is either conserving German impotence and thus our downfall, or one is ushering in
the victory of Bolshevism. If one is not willing to abandon these concepts, then it is my
conviction that a recovery of the German nation is no longer possible. The chalk line which
the Weltanschauungen have drawn for peoples throughout the history of the world has more
than once been the death line. Either the attempt to reshape a body politic hard as iron from
this conglomerate of parties, associations, organizations, world outlooks, arrogance of rank,
and class madness is successful, or else Germany will perish once and for all for lack of this
inner consolidation. Even if another twenty emergency decrees were sent to hail down on our
Volk, they would be unable to alter the main course leading to our ruin! If one day the way
which leads upwards is to be found again, then first of all the German Volk must be bent back
into shape. That is a process no one can escape! It does no good to say: "The proletarians are
the only ones to blame for that!" No, believe me, our entire German Volk, every single class,

has more than its share of the blame for our collapse; some because they willed it and
intentionally tried to bring it about; the others because they looked on and were too weak to
prevent it! In history, failure weighs just as heavily as the intention or the deed itself. Today
no one can escape the obligation to bring about the regeneration of the German Volkskorper
by means of his own personal contribution and integration.

When I speak to you today, then it is not with the aim of moving you to cast your
ballots or inducing you to do this or that for the party on my account. No, I am presenting an
outlook to you here, and I am convinced that the victory of this outlook constitutes the only
possible starting point for a German recovery; at the same time it is also the very last asset
which the German Volk possesses. I have heard it often said by our opponents: "You, too,
will be unable to master today's crisis." Assuming, Gentlemen, that that were the case. Then
what would that mean? It would mean that we were approaching an appalling age and would
have nothing with which to counter it but a purely materialistic attitude on all sides. The
crisis, however, would be experienced a thousand times more strongly as a purely
materialistic matter, without some ideal having been restored to the Volk.

People so often say to me: "You are only the drummer of national Germany!" And what
if I were only the drummer?! Today it would be a greater statesmanlike deed to drum a new
faith into this German Volk than to slowly squander away the one they have now. (Cheers of
approval) You take a fortress and subject it to the harshest of privations: as long as its
garrison can envision salvation, believes in it, hopes for it-it can bear reduced rations.
Completely remove from the hearts of these people their last faith in the possibility of
salvation, in a better future, and you will witness how these people suddenly come to view
reduced rations as the most important thing in their lives. The more they are made conscious
of the fact that they are mere objects of trade, mere prisoners of world politics, the more they
will turn exclusively to material interests, like any prisoner. Conversely, the more you lead a
people back to the sphere of ideal faith, the more it will come to regard material distress as a
less exclusively determinant factor. The most tremendous proof of this has been our own
German Volk. Surely we never want to forget that it waged religious wars for 150 years with
an enormous sense of devotion, that hundreds of thousands of people once left their own plot
of land and all their worldly goods for the sake of an ideal and a conviction! We never want to
forget that for 150 years there arose not a single ounce of material interest! And then you will
comprehend how tremendous the power of an idea, of an ideal, can be! And only in this light
can one understand that today hundreds of thousands of young people in our Movement are
willing to risk their lives to combat the opponent. I know very well, Gentlemen, that when
National Socialists march through the streets, and the evening is suddenly pierced by
commotion and racket, then citizens draw open their curtains, look out and say: "My night's
rest has been disturbed again and I can't sleep. Why do the Nazis always have to agitate and
run around at night?" Gentlemen, if everyone would think that way, then one would have
one's peace at night, but citizens would no longer be able to go out on the streets today. If
everyone would think that way, if these young people had no ideal to motivate them and
propel them forwards, then of course they would gladly manage without these nocturnal
battles. But let us not forget that it is a sacrifice when today many hundreds of thousands of
SA and SS men of the National Socialist Movement climb onto trucks every day, protect
meetings, put on marches, sacrifice night after night and return only at daybreak-and then
either back to the workshop and factory or out to collect their pittance as unemployed; when
they buy their uniforms, their shirts, their badges, and even pay their own transportation from
what little they have-believe me, that is already a sign of the power of an ideal, a great ideal!
And if today the entire German nation had the same faith in its calling which these hundreds

of thousands have, if the entire nation possessed this idealism-Germany would stand
differently in the eyes of the world today! For our situation in the world results, in its
devastating effects for us, only from the fact that we ourselves underrate German strength.
Only when we have revised this disastrous assessment can Germany make use of the political
possibilities of once more-if we look far into the future-placing German life on a natural and
sound foundation: either new Lebensraum and the expansion of a large domestic market or
the protection of German economy against the outside by deploying accumulated German
strength. The labor resources of our Volk, the capabilities are there, no one can deny our
industriousness. But first the political foundations must be laid anew: without them,
industriousness, capability, diligence, and thrift would ultimately be of no avail. For an
oppressed nation is not capable of allocating the profits accruing from its thrift to its own
welfare; rather, it is forced to sacrifice them on the altar of blackmail and tribute.

Thus, in contrast to our official Government, I regard the vehicle for German recovery
not as being the primacy of German foreign policy, but rather as being the primacy of the
restoration of a healthy, national and powerful German body politic. It was in order to
accomplish this task that I founded the National Socialist Movement thirteen years ago and
have led it for the past twelve years; and I hope that it will also accomplish this task in days to
come, that it will leave behind it the best reward for its struggle: a German body politic
completely regenerated from within, intolerant against anyone who sins against the nation and
its interests, intolerant against anyone who will not acknowledge its vital interests or opposes
them, intolerant and relentless against anyone who endeavors to destroy and subvert this
Volkskorper-and otherwise open to friendship and peace with anyone who wants friendship
and peace! (Long applause)

January 27, 1932

Adolf Hitler - "New Year 's Proclamation to the National Socialists

and Party Comrades "

January 1, 1933

/^^'oday, more than ever, I am determined to the utmost not to sell out our
I Movement's right of the firstborn for the cheap substitute of a participation in a
^^Kgovernment devoid of power. That protest of the astute that we should come from
inside and through the back door and gain gradual success is nothing but the same protest
which bade us, in 1917 and 1918, to reach an understanding with irreconcilable opponents
and then to debate with them peacefully in a League of Nations. Thanks to the traitors from
within, the German Volk surrendered itself to this advice. The Kaiser's lamentable advisors
believed that they should not oppose him. But as long as the Almighty gives me life and
health, I will defend myself to my last breath against any such attempt and I know that, in this
resolve, I have the millions of zealous supporters and fighters of our Movement behind me
who did not hope, argue and suffer with the intention of allowing the proudest and greatest
uprising of the German Volk to sell its mission for a few ministerial posts! If our opponents
invite us to take part in a government like this, they are not doing it with the intention of
slowly but surely putting us in power, but rather in the conviction that they are thus wresting
it from us forever! Great are the tasks of our Movement for the coming year. But the greatest
task of all will be to make it as clear as possible to our fighters, members, and followers that
this Party is not an end in itself, but merely a means to an end.

They should realize that the organization, with all its greatness and beauty, only has a
purpose, and thus the justification to exist, when it is the eternally unforbearing and
belligerent herald and advocate of the National Socialist idea of a German Volksgemeinschaft
to come! Everything which this Movement calls its own-its organizations, whether in the SA
or the SS, in the political leadership, or the organization of our peasants and our youth-all of
this can have only the single purpose of fighting for this new Germany, in which there will
ultimately be no bourgeoisie and no more proletarians, but only German Volksgenossen.

This is the greatest task with which our Volk has been confronted for more than a
thousand years.

The movement which accomplishes this task will engrave its name for all eternity in the
immortal book of the history of our nation.

Thus in the face of the red flood, the dangers in the East and France's eternal threat; in
the midst of need and wretchedness, misery and desperation, we, my party comrades, SA and
SS men, National Socialist peasants and National Socialist youth, shall clench our fists even
more firmly about our banner and, with it, march into the coming year.

We shall be willing to sacrifice and fight, and would rather pass away ourselves than
allow that Movement to pass away which is Germany's last strength, last hope, and last
future.

We salute the National Socialist Movement, its dead martyrs and its living fighters!
Long live Germany, the Volk and the Reich! Munich, December 31, 1932 Adolf Hitler In this

100

New Year's message, Hitler cited the peasants in the same breath with the SA and the SS.
Indeed, the peasants were his largest asset at that time, comprising the bulk of his voters.

In a lengthy address held on January 3 at a Convention of the NSDAP on agricultural
policies in Munich, Hitler underlined the special significance of the peasantry for the National
Socialist Movement. With a certain amount of bluntness, he proclaimed that the theory of Blut
and Boden (blood and soil) applied not to domestic, but rather to foreign policy. Here he was
referring to the acquisition of new land and soil which he had propagated in Mein Kampf. On
January 3, Hitler declared in part as follows: The fulfillment of the fundamental idea of
national policy reawakened by National Socialism which is expressed in the theory of Blut
und Boden will be accompanied by the most thorough and revolutionary reorganization which
has ever taken place.

Our demand for strengthening the basic racial principles of our Volk, which this term
signifies and which at the same time includes safeguarding the existence of our Volk in
general, is also the determining factor in all of the aims of National Socialist domestic and
foreign policy.

Once we have succeeded in purging and regenerating our Volk, foreign countries will
very soon realize that they are confronted with a different Volk than hitherto.

And thus the prerequisites will be given for putting our own land and soil in thorough
order and securing the life of the nation on our own for long years to come. The development
in world economics and politics which automatically leads to an increasing blockade against
our exports in international markets makes a major, fundamental transposition an absolute
necessity. Even if today's rulers shut their eyes to this fact, the chronic cause of our grave
economic need and appalling unemployment is nevertheless an indisputable reality. Either we
eliminate this cause and accomplish the required reorganization with vigor and energy in good
time, or fate will bring it about by force and destroy our Volk. If we succeed in putting the
basic principle of Blut und Boden into practice at home and abroad, then for the first time we,
as a Volk, will not be tossed at the mercy of events, but rather will then master circumstances
on our own.

Just as the peasant who sows each year must believe in his harvest without knowing whether
it may be destroyed by wind and weather and his work remain unrewarded, so must we too
have the political courage to do what necessarily must be done-regardless of whether success
is already in sight at the moment or not. The German peasant in particular will understand
even more of our National Socialist struggle in future than hitherto. But if the German
peasant, the foundation and life source of our Volk, is saved, then the entire nation will once
again be able to look ahead to the future with confidence.

101

Adolf Hitler - proclamation on January 30, 1933

National Socialists! My Party Comrades!

fourteen-year-long struggle, unparalleled in German history, has now culminated in
a great political triumph.

The Reich President von Hindenburg has appointed me, the Fiihrer of the National
Socialist Movement, as Chancellor of the German Reich.

National leagues and parties have united in a joint fight for the resurrection of Germany.

The honor witnessed by German history of now being able to take a leading part in
fulfilling this task I owe, next to the generous resolve of the Field Marshal, to your loyalty and
devotion, my party comrades.

You followed me on cloudy days as unerringly as in the days of good fortune and
remained true even after the most crushing defeats, and it is to that fact alone we owe this
success.

Enormous is the task which lies before us. We must accomplish it, and we shall
accomplish it.

Of you, my party comrades, I have only one major request: give me your confidence
and your devotion in this new and great struggle, just as in the past, then the Almighty as well
will not deny us His blessings toward reestablishing a German Reich of honor, freedom and
domestic peace.

Berlin, January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler

102

Adolf Hitler - announcement and proclamation to the NSDAP

February 1, 1933

n the occasion of my appointment to Reich Chancellor, I have received countless
| congratulatory wishes from my party comrades. Unfortunately, I am not able to
thank each and every one, so I may take this opportunity to express my warmest
thanks to all of my loyal party comrades.

Berlin, February 1, 1933 Adolf Hitler

Party Comrades! Men of the SA and SS!

(y^hirteen years long you have followed me with a discipline seldom witnessed.

The Communist murder organization has been agitating against the national uprising for
days.

Keep calm! Preserve order and discipline! Do not allow yourselves to be confused into
ignoring my order by spies and provocateurs ! The hour for crushing this terror will come.

Adolf Hitler

103

Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin

February 2, 1933

^ftjYe have taken on the task of government in perhaps the most difficult period in
Irl [J. German history. It requires a strong belief not to succumb to doubt in such an
C^ hour, but rather to look ahead to the future with confidence and hope.

Three factors make up our motivation: first of all, we have confidence in the strength
and the industriousness of the German Volk; secondly, we are confident in the capabilities of
this Volk and its ingenuity which has, throughout history, repeatedly found ways to survive;
lastly, in spite of all the crises and catastrophes, we see before us German soil, German land.
And if past generations were able, in defiance of the vicissitudes of fate, ultimately to create
from these three sources of strength this great Reich we once witnessed, then it must be
possible, and the new government is convinced of this, it must be possible for us as well to
nurture this same greatness from these same roots and one day create it anew.

In doing so, we do not only want to use these eternal foundations as the basis for our
volkisch existence; we also naturally want to use all of the accomplishments and traditions
developed in the course of recent history as our basis. We prefer not to see these
accomplishments and traditions only in the isolated areas of culture or economics, but
naturally in the field of our civic life as well. We do not want to disregard the building blocks
which many centuries of German history have created for this Reich; on the contrary: we do
not, for instance, want to make the mistake of regulating and centralizing everything which
can be regulated and centralized, but rather wish to keep in mind that only those things are to
be accomplished uniformly which are absolutely necessary. We would be grateful to be able
to count on the assistance of the Lander; we do not want lip-service, we want real support;
and we are determined to do everything possible in return, in order to maintain the viability of
these historic building blocks of the German Reich. This will become all the more possible
the more the Reich and the Lander join forces in the great realization of the urgent need of our
time. I myself come from the south, am a citizen of a Northern German State, but I regard
myself as a German and live in German history. I do not want to blindly ignore the great and
historic deeds and accomplishments of this history but on the contrary, wish to respect
everything which past generations have accomplished, including the historical formation of
our nation, in the hope that so many more coming generations will also respect what it is we
propose to accomplish. 1

1 On February 2, 1933, the Fuhrer also said in his proclamation to the SA: "The hour for crushing this
[Communist] terror is coming."

104

The first radio broadcast of Adolf Hitler 's proclamation

February 1, 1933
10:00 PM

'ore than fourteen years have passed since that ill-fated day when, blinded by
^promises at home and abroad, the German Volk lost sight of the most valuable
assets of our past and of our Reich, its honor and its freedom, and thus lost
everything. Since those days of treachery, the Almighty has withheld His blessing from our
Volk. Dissension and hatred have made their way into our midst. In the profoundest distress,
millions of the best German men and women from all walks of life watch as the unity of the
nation vanishes and dissolves in a muddle of political and egotistical opinions, economic
interests and differences in Weltanschauung.

As so often before in our history, Germany has presented a picture of heartbreaking
disunity since that day of revolution. We were never given the promised equality and
fraternity, and we have lost our liberty. The disintegration of the unity of spirit and will of our
Volk at home was followed by the disintegration of its political standing in the world.

Imbued with burning conviction that the German Volk entered the great fight in 1914
without a thought to any guilt on its part and filled only with the burdensome care of having
to defend the Reich from attack and preserve the freedom and the very existence of the
German Volk, we see in the shattering fate which has plagued us since November 1918
merely the product of our disintegration at home. However, the rest of the world as well has
been shaken no less by major crises since then. The historical balance of power, which once
played no small part in bringing about an understanding of the necessity for internal solidarity
of the nations, with all its positive economic consequences, has been done away with.

The insane conception of victors and vanquished destroys the confidence between
nations and with it world economy. But the misery of our Volk is appalling! The starving
millions of unemployed proletarians in industry are being followed by the impoverishment of
the entire Mittelstand and artisan professions. When this disintegration ultimately reaches the
German peasants, we will be confronted by a catastrophe of unfathomable dimensions. For
not only will a Reich disintegrate at the same time, but also a two-thousand-year-old
inheritance of valuable, the most valuable assets of human culture and civilization. The
warning signs of this approaching disintegration are all about us. In a single gigantic offensive
of willpower and violence, the Communist method of madness is attempting to poison and
disrupt the Volk, which is shaken and uprooted to its innermost core, with the aim of driving
it toward an age which would be even worse in relation to the promises of today's Communist
spokesmen than the period we have now left behind us in relation to the promises of those
same apostles in November 1918.

Beginning with the family and ranging through all of the concepts of honor and loyalty,
Volk und Vaterland, culture and economy, all the way to the eternal foundation of our
morality and our faith: nothing has been spared by this negating, all-destroying dogma.
Fourteen years of Marxism have ruined Germany. One year of Bolshevism would destroy
Germany. The richest and most beautiful cultural areas of the world today would be
transformed into chaos and a heap of ruins. Even the suffering of the last decade and a half
could not be compared to the misery of a Europe in whose heart the red flag of destruction

105

had been hoisted. May the thousands of wounded, the innumerable dead which this war has
already cost Germany serve as storm clouds warning against the coming tempest.

In these hours when we were overcome by a powerful anxiety as to the existence and
the future of the German nation, the aged leader of the World War appealed to us men in the
national parties and leagues to fight under him once more as we had at the front, this time at
home, in unity and loyalty for the salvation of the Reich. The venerable Reich President has
allied himself with us in this noble sense, and therefore we shall vow to God, our conscience
and our Volk as national leaders that we may resolutely and steadfastly fulfill the task thus
conferred upon us as the National Government.

The inheritance we have taken on is a terrible one.

The task which we must accomplish is the most difficult ever posed to German
statesmen within the memory of mankind. But our confidence is unbounded, for we believe in
our Volk and in its imperishable virtues. Peasants, workers, and bourgeoisie must all join
together to provide the building blocks for the new Reich.

The National Government will therefore regard it as its first and foremost duty to
reestablish the unity of spirit and will of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations
upon which the power of our nation rests. It will extend its strong, protecting hand over
Christianity as the basis of our entire morality, and the family as the germ cell of the body of
our Volk and State. It will reawaken in our Volk, beyond the borders of rank and class, its
sense of national and political unity and its resultant duties. It will establish reverence for our
great past and pride in our old traditions as the basis for the education of our German youth.
Thus it will declare a merciless war against spiritual, political and cultural nihilism. Germany
must not and will not drown in anarchistic Communism.

It will replace turbulent instincts with national discipline as the guiding rule of our life.
In doing so, it will devote great care to those institutions which constitute the true guarantors
of the power and strength of our nation.

The National Government will perform the immense task of reorganizing the economy
of our Volk with two great four-year plans: Salvation of the German peasant in order to
maintain the food supply and thus the basis of life in our nation.

Salvation of the German worker in an enormous and all-embracing attack on
unemployment.

In fourteen years, the November parties have ruined the German peasantry.

In fourteen years they have created an army of millions of unemployed. The national
government will, with iron determination and unshakable persistence, implement the
following plan: Within four years the German peasant must be rescued from impoverishment.

Within four years unemployment must be finally overcome.

At the same time, this will lay the groundwork for the recovery of the rest of the
economy.

106

The National Government will couple this gigantic task of reorganizing our economy
with the task and accomplishment of reorganizing the Reich, the Lander, and the
communities, both in administrative and fiscal terms.

Only then will the concept of a federal preservation of the Reich become a full-blooded,
real-life certainty.

The concept of a compulsory labor service and the settlement policy number among the
cornerstones of this program.

Securing daily bread, however, also includes the performance of social duties for the
sick and the aged.

In an austerity administration, promoting employment, maintaining our peasantry, as
well as exploiting individual initiative also give the best guarantee for avoiding any
experiments which would endanger our currency.

In terms of foreign policy, the National Government regards preserving the right to live
and thus regaining the freedom of our Volk as its highest priority.

By being resolute in bringing about an end to the chaotic state of affairs in Germany, it
will assist in restoring to the community of nations a state of equal worth and thus, however,
also a state with equal rights. The Government is impregnated with the immensity of the duty
of advocating, together with this free and equal Volk, the preservation and maintenance of a
peace which the world needs today more than ever before.

May the understanding of all others assist us in fulfilling this, our most sincere wish, for
the welfare of Europe, and more, for the welfare of the whole world. As great as is our love
for our army as the bearer of our arms and the symbol of our great past, we would be happy if
the world, by limiting its own armaments, would never again make it necessary for us to
increase ours.

However, if Germany is to experience this political and economic revival and
conscientiously fulfill its obligations to the other nations, one decisive step is required:
overcoming the Communist infiltration of Germany.

We men of the Government feel that we are responsible to German history for
reestablishing the great and orderly body politic and thus finally overcoming class madness
and class struggle. It is not any one class we look to, but rather the German Volk, its millions
of peasants, bourgeois and workers, who will together either overcome the problems of these
times or succumb to them.

Resolved and true to our oath, we will thus-in view of the present Reichstag's inability
to support this work-ask the German Volk itself to take on this task we call our own.

Reich President von Hindenburg has called upon us and given us the order to use our
own unity to restore to the nation the chance for recovery.

Thus we now appeal to the German Volk to take part in signing this deed of
reconciliation.

107

The Government of the National Uprising wants to work, and it will work.

It was not this government which led the German nation into ruin for fourteen years;
this government wants to lead the nation to the top once more.

It is determined to pay the debt of fourteen years in four years.

But it cannot make the work of reconstruction dependent upon the approval of those
who are to blame for the collapse.

The Marxist parties and their fellow travellers have had fourteen years to prove their
prowess.

The result is a heap of ruins.

Now, German Volk, give us four years, and then pass judgment upon us! True to the
order of the Field Marshal, we shall begin. May Almighty God look mercifully upon our
work, lead our will on the right path, bless our wisdom, and reward us with the confidence of
our Volk.

We are not fighting for ourselves, but for Germany!

108

Adolf Hitler - policy statement on the Enabling Act

to the Reichstag

Berlin, March 23, 1933

(jjT^adies and Gentlemen of the German Reichstag! By agreement with the Reich
< \IA, Government, today the National Socialist German Workers' Party and the German
C_ National People's Party have presented to you for resolution a notice of motion
concerning a "Law for Removing the Distress of Volk and Reich." The reasons for this
extraordinary measure are as follows: In November 1918, the Marxist organizations seized the
executive power by means of a Revolution. The monarchs were dethroned, the authorities of
Reich and Lander removed from office, and thus a breach of the Constitution was committed.
The success of the revolution in a material sense protected these criminals from the grips of
justice. They sought moral justification by asserting that Germany or its government bore the
guilt for the outbreak of the War.

This assertion was deliberately and objectively untrue. In consequence, however, these
false accusations in the interest of our former enemies led to the severest oppression of the
entire German Volk, and the violation of the assurances given to us in Wilson's Fourteen
Points then led to a time of boundless misfortune for Germany, that is to say the working
German Volk.

All the promises made by the men of November 1918 proved to be, if not acts of
intentional deception, then no less damnable illusions. The "achievements of the Revolution"
were, taken in their entirety, agreeable for only the smallest of fractions of our Volk, but for
the overwhelming majority, at least insofar as these people were forced to earn their daily
bread by honest work, they were infinitely sad. It is understandable that the survival instinct
of those parties and men guilty of this development invents a thousand euphemisms and
excuses. An objective comparison of the average outcome of the last fourteen years with the
promises once proclaimed is a crushing indictment of the responsible architects of this crime
unparalleled in German history.

In the course of the past fourteen years, our Volk has suffered deterioration in all sectors
of life, which could inconceivably have been greater. The question as to what, if anything,
could have been worse than in these times is a question which cannot be answered in light of
the basic values of our German Volk as well as the political and economic inheritance which
once existed.

In spite of its lack of mobility in political feelings and positions, the German Volk itself
has increasingly turned away from concepts, parties, and associations which, in its eyes, are
responsible for these conditions.

The number of Germans who inwardly supported the Weimar Constitution in spite of
the suggestive significance and ruthless exploitation of the executive power dwindled, in the
end, to a mere fraction of the entire nation.

Another typical characteristic of these fourteen years was the fact that- apart from
natural fluctuations-the curve of developments has shown a constant decline. This depressing
realization was one of the causes of the general state of despair. It served to promote the

109

insight into the necessity of thoroughly rejecting the ideas, organizations, and men in which
one gradually and rightly began to recognize the underlying causes of our decay.

The National Socialist Movement was thus able, in spite of the most horrible
oppression, to convert increasing numbers of Germans in terms of spirit and will to defensive
action. Now, in association with the other national leagues, it has eliminated the powers which
have been ruling since November 1918 within a few short weeks and, by means of a
revolution, transferred public authority to the hands of the National Government. On March 5,
the German Volk gave its approval to this action.

The program for the reconstruction of the Volk and the Reich is determined by the
magnitude of the distress crippling our political, moral and economic life.

Filled with the conviction that the causes of this collapse lie in internal damage to the
body of our Volk, the Government of the National Revolution aims to eliminate the afflictions
from our volkisch life which would, in future, continue to foil any real recovery. The
disintegration of the nation into irreconcilably opposite Weltanschauungen which was
systematically brought about by the false doctrines of Marxism means the destruction of the
basis for any possible community life.

The dissolution permeates all of the basic principles of social order. The completely
opposite approaches of the individuals to the concepts of state, society, religion, morality,
family, and economy rips open differences which will lead to a war of all against all. Starting
with the liberalism of the past century, this development will end, as the laws of nature
dictate, in Communist chaos.

The mobilization of the most primitive instincts leads to a link between the concepts of
a political theory and the actions of real criminals. Beginning with pillaging, arson, raids on
the railway, assassination attempts, and so on-all these things are morally sanctioned by
Communist theory. Alone the method of individuals terrorizing the masses has cost the
National Socialist Movement more than 350 dead and tens of thousands of injured within the
course of a few years.

The burning of the Reichstag, one unsuccessful attempt within a large-scale operation,
is only a taste of what Europe would have to expect from a triumph of this demonical
doctrine. When a certain press, particularly outside Germany, today attempts, true to the
political lie advanced to a principle by Communism, to link Germany's national uprising to
this disgraceful act, this can only serve to strengthen my resolve to leave no stone unturned in
order to avenge this crime as quickly as possible by having the guilty arsonist and his
accomplices publicly executed! Neither the German Volk nor the rest of the world has
become sufficiently conscious of the entire scope of the operation planned by this
organization.

Only by means of its immediate action was the Government able to ward off a
development which would have shaken all of Europe had it proceeded to its disastrous end.
Several of those who fraternize with the interests of Communism both within and outside of
Germany, motivated by hatred for the national uprising, would themselves have become
victims of such a development.

110

It will be the utmost goal of the National Government to stamp out and eliminate every
trace of this phenomenon, not only in the interest of Germany, but in the interest of the rest of
Europe.

It will not lose sight of the realization that, in doing so, it is not the negative problem of
this organization with which it is dealing, but rather the implementation of the positive task of
winning the German worker for the National State. Only the creation of a real
Volksgemeinschaft, rising above the interests and conflicts of Stdnde und Klassen, is capable
of permanently removing the source of nourishment of these aberrations of the human mind.
The establishment of such a solidarity in Weltanschauung in the body of the German politic is
all the more important, for only this will make it possible to maintain friendly relations with
the non-German powers without regard to the tendencies or Weltanschauungen to which they
are subject, for the elimination of Communism in Germany is a purely domestic German
affair. It should be in the interests of the rest of the world as well, for the outbreak of
Communist chaos in the densely populated German Reich would lead to political and
economic consequences particularly in the rest of western Europe, the proportions of which
are unfathomable. The inner disintegration of our Volksgemeinschaft inevitably resulted in an
increasingly alarming weakening of the authority of the highest levels of leadership. The
sinking reputation of the Reich Government- which is the inevitable product of unstable
domestic conditions of this type-led to ideas on the part of various parties in the individual
Lander which are incompatible with the unity of the Reich. The greatest consideration for the
traditions of the Lander cannot erase the bitter realization that the extent of the fragmentation
of national life in the past was not only not beneficial, but positively injurious to the world
and life status of our Volk.

It is not the task of a superior national leadership to subsequently surrender what has
grown organically to the theoretical principle of an unrestrained unitarianization. But it is its
duty to raise the unity of spirit and will of the leadership of the nation and thus the concept of
the Reich as such beyond all shadow of a doubt.

The welfare of our communities and Lander-as well as the existence of each German
individual-must be protected by the State. Therefore the Reich Government does not intend to
dissolve the Lander by means of the Enabling Act. However, it will institute measures which
will guarantee the continuity of political intention in the Reich and Lander from now on and
for all time. The greater the consensus of spirit and will, the lesser the interest of the Reich for
all time in violating the independent cultural and economic existence of the separate Lander.
The present habit of the Governments of the Lander and the Reich of mutually belittling each
other, making use of the modern means of public propaganda, is completely outrageous. I will
under no circumstances tolerate-and the Reich Government will resolve all measures to
combat-the spectacle of ministers of German Governments attacking or belittling each other
before the world in mass meetings or even with the aid of public radio broadcasts.

It also results in a complete invalidation of the legislative bodies in the eyes of the Volk
when, even assuming normal times, the Volk is driven to the polls in the Reich or in the
individual Lander almost twenty times in the course of four years. The Reich Government
will find the way to ensure that the expression of the will of the nation, once given, leads to
uniform consequences for both the Reich and the Lander.

A further reform of the Reich will only ensue from ongoing developments.

111

Its aim must be to design a constitution which ties the will of the Volk to the authority
of a genuine leadership. The statutory legalization of this reform of the Constitution will be
granted to the Volk itself.

The Government of the National Revolution basically regards it as its duty, in
accordance with the spirit of the Volk's vote of confidence, to prevent the elements which
consciously and intentionally negate the life of the nation from exercising influence on its
formation. The theoretical concept of equality before the law shall not be used, under the
guise of equality, to tolerate those who despise the laws as a matter of principle or, moreover,
to surrender the freedom of the nation to them on the basis of democratic doctrines. The
Government will, however, grant equality before the law to all those who, in forming the front
of our Volk against this danger, support national interests and do not deny the Government
their assistance.

Our next task, in any case, is to call upon the spiritual leaders of these destructive
tendencies to answer for themselves and at the same time to rescue the victims of their
seduction.

In particular, we perceive in the millions of German workers who pay homage to these
ideas of madness and self destruction only the results of an unforgivable weakness on the part
of former governments who failed to put a stop to the dissemination of these ideas, the
practical implementation of which they were forced to punish. The Government will not allow
itself to be shaken by anyone in its decision to solve this problem. Now it is the responsibility
of the Reichstag to adopt a clear standpoint for its part. This will change nothing as to the fate
of Communism and the other organizations fraternizing with it. In its measures, the National
Government is guided by no other factor than preserving the German Volk, and in particular
the mass of millions making up its working populace, from unutterable misery.

Thus it views the matter of restoring the monarchy as out of the question at present in
light of the very existence of these circumstances. It would be forced to regard any attempt to
solve this problem on the part of the individual Lander as an attack on the legal entity of the
Reich and take respective action.

Simultaneously with this political purification of our public life, the Reich Government
intends to undertake a thorough moral purging of the German Volkskorper. The entire system
of education, the theater, the cinema, literature, the press, and radio-they all will be used as a
means to this end and valued accordingly. They must all work to preserve the eternal values
residing in the essential character of our Volk. Art will always remain the expression and
mirror of the yearning and the reality of an era. The cosmopolitan contemplative attitude is
rapidly disappearing. Heroism is arising passionately as the future shaper and leader of
political destinies. The task of art is to give expression to this determining spirit of the age.
Blut and Rasse will once more become the source of artistic intuition. The task of the
government, particularly in an age of limited political power, is to ensure that the internal
value of life and the will of the nation to live are given that much more monumental artistic
expression in culture. This resolve entails the obligation to grateful appreciation of our great
past. The gap between this past and the future must be bridged in all sectors of our historical
and cultural life. Reverence for the Great Men must be instilled once more in German youth
as a sacred inheritance. In being determined to undertake the political and moral purification
of our public life, the government is creating and securing the requirements for a genuinely
profound return to religious life.

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The advantages in personnel policy which might result from compromises with atheist
organizations do not come close to offsetting the results which would become apparent in the
general destruction of basic moral values.

The National Government perceives in the two Christian confessions the most important
factors for the preservation of our Volkstum. It will respect any contracts concluded between
these Churches and the Lander.

Their rights are not to be infringed upon. But the Government expects and hopes that
the task of working on the national and moral regeneration of our Volk taken on by the
Government will, in turn, be treated with the same respect.

It will face all of the other confessions with objective fairness. However, it cannot
tolerate that membership in a certain confession or a certain race could mean being released
from general statutory obligations or even constitute a license for committing or tolerating
crimes which go unpunished. The Government's concern lies in an honest coexistence
between Church and State; the fight against a materialist Weltanschauung and for a genuine
Volksgemeinschaft equally serves both the interests of the German nation and the welfare of
our Christian faith.

Our legal institutions must above all work to preserve this Volksgemeinschaft. The
irremovability of the judges on the one hand must ensure a flexibility in their judgments for
the welfare of society on the other.

Not the individual but the Volk as a whole must be the focal point of legislative efforts.
In future, high treason and betrayal of the Volk (Landes- und Volksverrat) will be ruthlessly
eradicated. The foundations on which the judiciary is based can be none other than the
foundations on which the nation is based. Thus may the judiciary always take into
consideration the difficult burden of decision carried by those who bear the responsibility for
shaping the life of the nation under the harsh dictates of reality.

Great are the tasks of the National Government in the sphere of economic life.

Here all action shall be governed by one law: the Volk does not live for the economy,
and the economy does not exist for capital, but capital serves the economy and the economy
serves the Volk! In principle, the Government protects the economic interests of the German
Volk not by taking the roundabout way through an economic bureaucracy to be organized by
the State, but by the utmost promotion of private initiative and a recognition of the rights of
property.

A fair balance must be established between productive intention on the one hand and
productive work on the other. The administration should respect the results of ability,
industriousness and work by being thrifty. The problem of our public finances is also a
problem which is, in no small part, the problem of a thrifty administration.

The proposed reform of our tax system must result in a simplification in assessment and
thus to a decrease in costs and charges. In principle, the tax mill should be built downstream
and not at the source. As a consequence of these measures, the simplification of the
administration will certainly result in a decrease in the tax burden. This reform of the tax

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system which is to be implemented in the Reich and the Lander is not, however, an overnight
matter, but one to be contemplated when the time is judged to be right.

As a matter of principle, the Government will avoid currency experiments.

We are faced above all with two economic tasks of the first order. The salvation of the
German peasant must be achieved at all costs.

The annihilation of this class in our Volk would bring with it the most severe
consequences imaginable. The restoration of the profitability of the agricultural operations
may be hard on the consumer. But the fate which would descend upon the entire German
Volk should the German peasant perish would stand no comparison with these hardships.
Only in connection with the profitability of our agriculture which must be achieved at all costs
can the problems of stays of execution or debt relief be solved. Were this to prove
unsuccessful, the annihilation of our peasants would inevitably lead not only to the collapse of
the German economy per se, but above all to the collapse of the German Volkskorper.

The maintenance of its health is, however, the first requirement for the blossoming and
flourishing of our industry, German domestic trade, and the German export industry. Without
the counterweight of the German peasantry, Communist madness would already have overrun
Germany by now and thus conclusively destroyed the German economy. What the entire
economy, including our export industry, owes to the healthy common sense of the German
peasant cannot be compensated by any kind of sacrifice in terms of business. Thus our
greatest attention must be devoted to the further settlement of German land in future.

Furthermore, it is perfectly clear to the National Government that the removal of the
distress in both agricultural and urban economy is contingent upon the integration of the army
of unemployed in the process of production.

This constitutes the second and most monumental economic task. It can be solved only
by a general pacification in implementing sound natural economic principles and all measures
necessary, even if, at the time, they cannot expect to enjoy any degree of popularity. The
creation of jobs and compulsory labor service are, in this connection, only isolated measures
within the scope of the offensive as a whole.

The attitude of the National Government toward the Mittelstand is similar to its attitude
toward the German peasants.

Its salvation can only be effected within the scope of general economic policy. The
National Government is determined to find a far-reaching solution to this problem. It
recognizes its historical task of supporting and promoting the millions of German workers in
their struggle for their rights to exist. As Chancellor and National Socialist, I feel allied to
them as the former companions of my youth. The increase in the consumer power of these
masses will constitute a substantial means of reviving the economy. While maintaining our
social legislation, the first step to its reform must be taken. In principle, however, every
worker shall be utilized in the service of the public. The stagnation of millions of human
working hours is madness and a crime which must inevitably lead to the impoverishment of
all. Regardless of which values would have been created by the utilization of our surplus work
force, for millions of people who today are going to waste in misery and distress, they could

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represent essential values of life. The organizational capabilities of our Volk must and will
succeed in solving this problem.

We know that the geographic position of Germany, with her lack of raw materials, does
not fully permit Autarkie for our Reich. It cannot be stressed too often that nothing is further
from the Reich Government's mind than hostility to exporting. We know that we need this
connection with the world and that the sale of German goods in the world represents the
livelihood of many millions of German Volksgenossen.

But we also know the requirements for a sound exchange of services between the
peoples of the earth. For years, Germany has been compelled to perform services without
receiving counter-services. Consequently, the task of maintaining Germany as an active
partner in the exchange of goods is less a question of commercial than of financial policy. As
long as we are not accorded any settlement of our foreign debts which is fair and appropriate
to our strength, we shall unfortunately be forced to maintain our foreign exchange control
policy (Devisenzwangswirtschaft). For this reason, the Reich Government is also obligated to
maintain the dam built against the flow of capital across the borders.

If the Reich Government allows itself to be guided by these principles, one can surely
expect the growing understanding of the foreign countries to ease the integration of our Reich
in the peaceful competition of the nations.

The first step toward promoting transportation with the aim of achieving a reasonable
balance of all transportation interests-a reform of the motor vehicle tax-will take place at the
beginning of next month. The maintenance of the Reichsbahn and its reintegration under
Reich authority, which is to be effected as quickly as possible, is a task which commits us not
only in an economic, but also in a moral sense. The National Government will give every
encouragement to the development of aviation as a means of peacefully connecting the
peoples to one another.

For all this activity, the Government requires the support not only of the general powers
in our Volk, which it is determined to utilize to the furthest possible extent, but also the
devoted loyalty and work of its professional civil service. Only if the public finances are in
urgent need will interferences take place; however, even in such a case, strict fairness shall
have the highest priority in governing our actions.

The protection of the frontiers of the Reich, and with them the life of our Volk and the
existence of our economy, is now in the hands of our Reichswehr which, in accordance with
the terms imposed upon us by the Treaty of Versailles, can be regarded as the only really
disarmed force in the world. In spite of its small size prescribed therein and its totally
insufficient arms, the German Volk can regard its Reichswehr with proud satisfaction. This
slight instrument of our national self-defense came into existence under the most difficult
conditions. In its spirit, it is the bearer of our best military traditions. With painstaking
conscientiousness the German Volk has thus fulfilled the obligations imposed upon it in the
Peace Treaty; what is more, even the replacement of ships in our fleet to which we were
authorized at that time has-I may be allowed to say, unfortunately-been carried out only to a
small extent.

For years Germany has been waiting in vain for the redemption of the promise to disarm
given us by the others. It is the sincere desire of the National Government to be able to refrain

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from increasing the German Army and our weapons insofar as the rest of the world is also
finally willing to fulfill its obligation of radically disarming. For Germany wants nothing
except equal rights to live and equal freedom.

However, the National Government wishes to cultivate this spirit of a will for freedom
in the German Volk. The honor of the nation, the honor of our Army, and the ideal of
freedom- all must once more become sacred to the German Volk! The German Volk wishes to
live in peace with the world.

It is for this very reason that the Reich Government will use every means to definitively
eliminate the separation of the peoples on earth into two categories.

Keeping open this wound leads the one to distrust, the other to hatred, and in the end to
a general feeling of insecurity. The National Government is willing to extend a hand in
sincere understanding to every people which is determined to once and for all put an absolute
end to the tragic past. The distress of the world can only come to an end if the appropriate
foundation is created by means of stable political conditions and if the peoples regain
confidence in one another.

To deal with the economic catastrophe, the following is necessary: 1. an absolutely
authoritarian leadership at home to create confidence in the stability of conditions; 2.
safeguarding peace on the part of the major nations for a long time to come and thus restoring
the confidence of the people in one another; and 3. the final triumph of the principles of
common sense in the organization and leadership of the economy as well as a general release
from reparations and impossible liabilities for debts and interest.

We are unfortunately confronted by the fact that the Geneva Conference, in spite of
lengthy negotiations, has not yet reached any practical result. The decision to institute a real
disarmament measure has repeatedly been delayed by questions on technical detail and by the
introduction of problems which have nothing to do with disarmament. This procedure is
unsuitable.

The illegal state of unilateral disarmament and the resulting national insecurity of
Germany cannot last any longer.

We recognize it as a sign of responsibility and good will that the British Government
has, with its disarmament proposal, attempted to finally move the Conference to arrive at
speedy decisions. The Reich Government will support any efforts aimed at effectively
implementing general disarmament and securing Germany's long-overdue claim for
disarmament. We have been disarmed for fourteen years, and for the past fourteen months we
have been waiting for the outcome of the Disarmament Conference. Even more far-reaching
is the plan of the head of the Italian Government, who is making a generous and foresighted
attempt to ensure the smooth and consistent development of European politics as a whole. We
attach the most earnest significance to this plan; we are willing to cooperate with absolute
sincerity on the basis it provides in order to unite the four great powers, England, France,
Italy, and Germany, in peaceful cooperation to courageously and determinedly approach those
tasks upon the solution of which Europe's fate depends.

For this reason we feel particularly grateful for the appreciative warmth which has
greeted Germany's national uprising in Italy. We wish and hope that the concurrence of

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spiritual ideals will be the basis for a continuing consolidation of the friendly relations
between the two countries.

Similarly, the Reich Government, which regards Christianity as the unshakable
foundation of the ethics and morality of the Volk, places great value on friendly relations with
the Vatican and attempts to develop them. We are filled with a feeling of empathy for the
troubles and distress of our Brudervolk in Austria. In all its doings, the Reich Government is
conscious of the connection between the fate of all German tribes. The attitude toward the
other individual foreign powers is evident from what has already been said. But there as well,
where the mutual relations are already encumbered with difficulties, we shall endeavor to
reach a settlement. However, the differentiation between victor and vanquished can never be
the basis of an understanding.

We are nonetheless of the conviction that a settlement of this sort in our relations to
France is possible if both governments really attack the problems confronting them with
farsightedness. In regard to the Soviet Union, the Reich Government is determined to
cultivate friendly relations which are productive for both parties. The Government of the
National Revolution above all views itself capable of such a positive policy with regard to
Soviet Russia. The fight against Communism in Germany is an internal affair, in which we
will never tolerate outside interference. The national political relations to other powers to
which we are related by mutual interests will not be affected by this. Our relationship with the
other countries shall continue to warrant our most earnest attention in future, in particular our
relationship to the major countries overseas, with which Germany has long been allied by
friendly ties and economic interests.

We have particularly at heart the fate of the Germans living outside the borders of the
Reich who are allied to us by language, culture, and traditions and who fight hard to retain
these values. The National Government is resolved to use all the means at its command to
support the rights internationally guaranteed to the German minorities.

We welcome the plan of the World Economic Conference and approve of its meeting
soon. The Reich Government is willing to contribute to this Conference in order to finally
achieve positive results.

The most important question is the problem of our short-term and longterm
indebtedness abroad.

The complete change in the conditions of the commodity markets of the world requires
an adaptation. Only by means of trusting cooperation is it possible to really remove the
widespread problems. Ten years of honest peace will be more beneficial for the welfare of all
nations than thirty years of drawnout stagnation in the terms of victor and vanquished.

In order to place itself in a position to fulfill the tasks falling within this scope, the
Government has had the two major parties, the National Socialists and the German
Nationalists, introduce the Enabling Act in the Reichstag.

Some of the planned measures require the approval of the majority necessary for
constitutional amendments. The performance of these tasks and their completion is necessary.
It would be inconsistent with the aim of the national uprising and it would fail to suffice for
the intended goal were the Government to negotiate with and request the approval of the

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Reichstag for its measures in each given case. In this context, the Government is not
motivated by a desire to give up the Reichstag as such. On the contrary: it reserves the right,
for the future as well, to inform the Reichstag of its measures or to obtain its consent.

The authority and the fulfillment of the tasks would suffer, however, were doubts in the
stability of the new regime to arise in the Volk. The Reich Government views a further
session of the Reichstag as an impossibility under the present condition of a far-reaching state
of excitation in the nation. Rarely has the course of a revolution of such great magnitude run
in such a disciplined and unbloody manner as the Erhebung of the German Volk during these
past weeks. It is my will and my firm intention to provide for this smooth development in
future as well.

However, this makes it all the more necessary that the National Government be
accorded that position of sovereignty which is fitting, in such an age, to put a halt to
developments of a different sort. The Government will only make use of this authorization
insofar as this is requisite for the implementation of vital measures. The existence of neither
the Reichstag nor the Reichsrat is endangered. The position and the rights of the Reich
President remain inviolate.

It will always be the first and foremost task of the Government to bring about inner
consensus with his aims. The existence of the Lander will not be abolished.

The rights of the Churches will not be curtailed and their position vis-a-vis the State will
not be altered. The number of cases in which there is an internal necessity for taking refuge in
such a law is, in and of itself, limited. All the more, however, the Government insists upon the
passage of the bill. Either way, it is asking for a clear decision. It is offering the parties of the
Reichstag the chance for a smooth development which might lead to the growth of an
understanding in future. However, the Government is just as determined as it is prepared to
accept a notice of rejection and thus a declaration of resistance. May you, Gentlemen, now
choose for yourselves between peace or war!

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Speech-duel between Adolf Hitler and Otto Wels

Berlin, March 23, 1933

Off resident Goring: Deputy Wels has the floor.

Wels (SPD), Deputy: Ladies and Gentlemen! We Social Democrats approve of the
Reich Chancellor's foreign policy demand of German equality of rights even that much more
emphatically because we have advocated it from the very beginning.

I may take the liberty, in this context, of making the personal remark that I was the first
German to oppose the untruth of Germany's blame for the outbreak of the World War before
an international forum, to be precise, at the Bern Conference on February 3, 1919.

No basic principle of our party has ever been able or will ever be able to hinder us from
representing the just claims of the German nation to the other peoples of the world.

The day before yesterday, the Reich Chancellor made a remark in Potsdam to which we
also subscribe. He said, "The utter folly of the theory of eternal victors and vanquished gave
birth to the utter absurdity of reparations and, as a consequence, the disastrous state of the
world's economy." This statement applies to foreign policy; it applies no less to domestic
policy.

Here too the theory of eternal victors and vanquished is, as the Reich Chancellor has
noted, utter folly.

But the Reich Chancellor's remark also recalls another remark which was made on July
23, 1919 in the National Assembly. It was said at that time, "We may be stripped of power,
but not of honor." It is clear that the opponents are after our honor, there is no doubt of that.
But it will remain our belief to the last that this attempt at divesting us of our honor will one
day rebound on those who instigated this attempt, for it is not our honor which is being
destroyed in the worldwide tragedy.

That is part of a statement which a government led by Social Democrats submitted
before the whole world on behalf of the German people, four hours before the Armistice ran
out, in order to block any further enemy advances. This statement constitutes a valuable
complement to the remark made by the Reich Chancellor.

No good can come of a dictated peace; and this applies all the more to domestic affairs.

A real Volksgemeinschaft cannot be established on such a basis. That requires first of
all equality of rights. May the Government guard itself against crude excesses of polemics;
may it prohibit incitements to violence with rigorousness for its own part. This might be
achieved if it is accomplished fairly and objectively on all sides and if one refrains from
treating defeated enemies as though they were outlaws.

Freedom and life they can take from us, but not honor.

119

Considering the persecution the Social Democratic Party has suffered recently, no one
can fairly demand or expect of it that it cast its vote in favor of the Enabling Act introduced
here. The elections of March 5 have resulted in a majority for the parties in government and
thus given them the opportunity to govern, strictly as laid down in the letter and the intention
of the Constitution.

But where this opportunity is given, it is coupled with an obligation.

Criticism is beneficial and necessary. Never in the history of the German Reichstag,
however, has control over public affairs vested in the elected representatives of the people
been eliminated to the extent to which this is now the case and will be even more so by means
of the new Enabling Act. This type of governmental omnipotence is destined to have even
more grave consequences due to the total lack of flexibility in the press.

Ladies and Gentlemen! A devastating picture has often been painted of the state of
affairs prevailing in Germany today. As always in such cases, there is no lack of exaggeration.
As far as my party is concerned, I wish to state that we did not ask for any intervention in
Paris; we did not send off millions to Prague; we did not disseminate exaggerated news
abroad.

It would be easier to counter such exaggerations if the type of reporting which
differentiates between right and wrong were admissible at home.

It would be even better if we were able, with a clear conscience, to attest to the fact that
the stability of the law has been restored for all.

And that, Gentlemen, is up to you.

The gentlemen of the National Socialist Party call the Movement they have unleashed a
National and not a National Socialist Revolution. The only connection between their
Revolution and Socialism has been confined until now to the attempt to destroy the Social
Democratic Movement which has constituted the pillar of the Socialist body of thought for
more than two generations, (Laughter from the National Socialists) and will continue to do so
in future. If the gentlemen of the National Socialist Party intended to perform Socialist deeds,
they would not need an Enabling Act to do so.

You would be certain of an overwhelming majority in this forum. Every motion you
made in the interests of the workers, the peasants, the whitecollar employees, the civil
servants, or the Mittelstand would meet with overpowering if not unanimous approval.

But you nevertheless first want to eliminate the Reichstag to proceed with your
Revolution. Destroying what exists does not suffice to make up a revolution.

The people expect positive achievements. They are awaiting drastic measures to combat
the economic distress prevalent not only in Germany, but everywhere in the world.

We Social Democrats have borne joint responsibility in the most difficult of times and
have been stoned as our reward.

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Our achievements in reconstructing the State and the economy and in liberating the
occupied territories will prevail in history.

We have created equal rights for all and sociallyoriented labor legislation. We have
aided in creating a Germany in which the path to leadership is open not only to counts and
barons, but also to men of the working class.

You cannot retreat from that without exposing your own Fuhrer.

Any attempt to turn back the wheels of time will be in vain. We Social Democrats are
aware that one cannot eliminate the realities of power politics by the simple act of legal
protests. We see the reality of your present rule. But the people's sense of justice also wields
political power, and we will never stop appealing to this sense of justice.

The Weimar Constitution is not a Socialist Constitution. But we adhere to the basic
principles of a constitutional state, to the equality of rights, and the concept of social
legislation anchored therein. We German Social Democrats solemnly pledge ourselves in this
historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and Socialism.

No Enabling Act can give you the power to destroy ideas which are eternal and
indestructible. You yourself have professed your belief in Socialism. Bismarck's Law against
Socialists has not destroyed the Social Democratic Party. Even further persecution can be a
source of new strength to the German Social Democratic Party.

We hail those who are persecuted and in despair. We hail our friends in the Reich. Their
steadfastness and loyalty are worthy of acclaim. The courage of their convictions, their
unbroken faith - are the guarantees of a brighter future.

President Goring: The Reich Chancellor has the floor.

Adolf Hitler: The pretty theories, which you, Mr. Deputy, have just expounded here,
have been addressed to world history a little too late.

Perhaps these realizations, put to practice years ago, would have made the complaints
you have today superfluous.

You declare that the Social Democratic Party subscribes to our foreign policy program;
that it rejects the lie of war guilt; that it is against reparations. Now I may ask just one
question: where was this fight during the time you had power in Germany? You once had the
opportunity to dictate the law of domestic behavior to the German Volk. You were able to do
it in other areas. It would have been equally possible to infuse in the German Revolution,
which you played a part in initiating, the same momentum and the same direction which
France once infused in its uprising in the year 1870.

It would have been at your discretion to shape the German uprising into one of true
national character, and you still would have had the right, had the flag of the new Republic
not returned triumphant, to say: we did everything in our power to avoid this catastrophe by a
final appeal to the strength of the German Volk.

121

At that time you avoided the fight; now you suddenly feel an urge to talk about it to
everyone around you.

You state that being stripped of power does not mean being stripped of honor.

You are right; that does not necessarily have to be the case. Even if we were divested of
our power, I know we would not be divested of our honor. Thanks to having been oppressed
by your party, our Movement had been stripped of power for years; it has never been stripped
of honor.

It is my conviction that we shall inoculate the German Volk with a spirit that, in view of
the Volk's defenselessness today, Mr. Deputy, will certainly never allow it to be stripped of
its honor.

Here, too, it was your responsibility, you who were in power for fourteen years, to
ensure that this German Volk had set an example of honor to the world. It was your
responsibility to ensure that, if the rest of the world insisted upon suppressing us, at least the
type of suppression the German Volk was subjected to would be one of dignity. You had the
opportunity to speak out against all of the manifestations of disgrace in our Volk. You could
have eliminated this treason just as easily as we will eliminate it.

You have no right to even associate yourself with this claim; for you should never, at
that hour when every revolution would have constituted the concurrence of the offenses of
treason and high treason, have given your support, even indirectly, to such acts. And you
should have prevented the German Volk from being subjected to a new constitution drawn up
at the beck and call of foreign countries. That has nothing to do with honor, allowing the
enemy to dictate one's own internal structure.

And, moreover, at that time you should have professed your faith in the German tricolor
and not in the colors on the handbills the enemy threw into our trenches, because more than
ever in an age of distress and suppression by the enemy must one show one's pride and even
more pledge one's support to one's Volk and the symbols of one's Volk. You would still have
had the opportunity, even if the environment had forced us to denounce everything which had
formerly been sacred to us, to allow the national honor to be evidenced to the world in
domestic policy.

You say: equal rights! Just as we desire it abroad, we also desire it at home. It was for
these 'equal rights,' Herr Wels, that we fought for fourteen years! You ignored these equal
rights as far as national Germany was concerned! So do not talk to us today about equal
rights! You say that the vanquished should not be labelled outlaws. Well, Mr. Deputy, we
were outlaws as long as you were in power.

You talk about persecution. I think there are few of us here present who were not forced
to pay in prison for the persecution you practiced. Few of us here present who were not made
to feel the effects of that persecution in acts of harassment a thousand times over and
incidents of suppression a thousand times over! And in addition to those of us here present, I
know a company of hundreds of thousands who were at the mercy of a system of persecution
which vent itself on them in a disgraceful, even in a positively despicable manner! You seem
to have totally forgotten that, for years, our shirts were ripped off our backs because you did
not approve of the color.

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Let us stay within the realm of reality! Your persecution has made us strong! You also
said that criticism is beneficial. We will take criticism from anyone who loves Germany. But
we will take no criticism from anyone who worships the Internationale! Here too, you have
come to your realization a good deal too late, Mr. Deputy.

You should have recognized the beneficial power of criticism when we were in the
opposition. Back then, you had not yet been confronted with these words; back then our press
was verboten and verboten and again verboten; our assemblies were banned; we were not
allowed to speak, and I was not allowed to speak- and that went on for years! And now you
say criticism is beneficial! (SPD hysterical cries)

President Goring: Stop talking and listen to this for once!

Adolf Hitler: You complain that in the end the world is told untrue facts about the state
of affairs in Germany. You complain that the world is told that every day dismembered
corpses are turned over to the Israelite cemeteries in Berlin. How that torments you; you
would be so glad to do justice to the truth! Well, Mr. Deputy, it must be child's play for your
party, with its international connections, to find out the truth. And not only that. These past
few days I have been reading the newspapers of your own Social Democratic sister parties in
German-Austria. No one is hindering you from disseminating your realization of the truth
there.

I would be curious as to how effective the power of your international connections
really will be in this case as well.

Would you please let me finish, I didn't interrupt you either! I have read your paper in
the Saar, Mr. Deputy, and it does nothing other than commit constant acts of treason, Deputy
Wels, it is constantly attempting to discredit Germany abroad, to shed a bad light upon our
Volk with lies to the rest of the world.

You talk about the lack of stability of the law. Gentlemen of the Social Democratic
Party! I too witnessed the Revolution in 1918. 1 really do have to say that if we did not have a
feeling for the law, we would not be here today, and you would not be here either! In 1918
you turned against those who had done nothing to harm you.

We are restraining ourselves from turning against those who tortured us and humiliated
us for fourteen years.

You say the National Socialist Revolution has nothing to do with Socialism, but rather
that its "Socialism" exists only in the sense that it persecutes the "only pillar of Socialism in
Germany," the SPD.

You are sissies, Gentlemen, and not worthy of this age, if you start talking about
persecution at this stage of the game. What has been done to you? You are sitting here and
your speaker is being listened to with patience.

You talk about persecution. Who has been persecuting you? You say you are the only
pillar of Socialism. You were the pillar of that mysterious Socialism of which, in reality, the
German Volk never had a glimpse.

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You are talking today about your achievements and your deeds; you are speaking of all
the things you intended to do. By your fruits shall ye, too, be known! The fruits testify against
you! If the Germany you created in fourteen years is any reflection of your socialist aims, then
all I can say is give us four years' time, Gentlemen, in order to show you the reflection of our
aims.

You say: "You want to eliminate the Reichstag to proceed with your Revolution."
Gentlemen, if so, we would not have found it necessary to first go to this vote, to convene this
Reichstag, or to have the draft of this bill presented.

God knows we would have had the courage to deal with you some other way as well!
You also said that we cannot ignore the Social Democratic Party because it was the first one
to clear these seats for the Volk, for the working people, and not only for barons or counts. In
every instance, Mr. Deputy, you are too late! Why did you not advise your friend Grzesinski
of your views in good time, why did you not tell your other friends Braun and Severing, who
accused me for years of being nothing more than a house painter's apprentice!- For years you
claimed that on your posters.

(Renewed protest from the Social Democrats; cries of "Quiet!" from the National Socialists;

the President 's bell calling for order)

President Goring: Now the Chancellor is getting even!

Adolf Hitler: And in the end I was actually threatened that I would be driven out of
Germany with a dog whip! We National Socialists will now clear the path for the German
worker leading to what is his to claim and demand. We National Socialists will be his
advocates; you, Gentlemen (addressing the Social Democrats), are no longer necessary! You
also state that not power, but a sense of justice is crucial. We have attempted to awaken this
sense of justice in our Volk for fourteen years, and we have succeeded in awakening it.
However, I now believe on the basis of my own political experiences with you - that
unfortunately, justice alone is not enough-one has to be in power, too! And do not mistake us
for a bourgeois world! You think that your star might rise again! Gentlemen, Germany's star
will rise and yours will fall.

You say you were not broken during the period of Socialist legislation. That was a
period in which the German workers saw in you something other than what you are today. But
why have you forgotten to mention this realization to us?! Everything that becomes rotten,
old, and weak in the life of a people disappears, never to return.

Your death knell has sounded as well, and it is only because we are thinking of
Germany and its distress and the requirements of national life that we appeal in this hour to
the German Reichstag to give its consent to what we could have taken at any rate.

We are doing it for the sake of justice-not because we overestimate power, but because
we may thus one day perhaps more easily join with those who, today, may be separated from
us but who nevertheless believe in Germany, too.

For I would not want to make the mistake of provoking opponents instead of either
destroying or becoming reconciled with them.

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I would like to extend my hand to those who, perhaps on other paths, will also come to
feel with their Volk in the end, (Cries of "Bravo!" from the Center Party) and would not want
to declare an everlasting war, (Renewed cries of "Bravo!") not because of weakness, but out
of love to my Volk, and in order to spare this German Volk all what will perish with the rest
in this age of struggles.

That you may never misunderstand me on this point: I extend my hand to everyone who
commits himself to Germany.

I do not recognize the precepts of the Internationale.

I believe that you (addressing the Social Democrats) are not voting for this bill for the
reason that you, in your innermost mentality, are incapable of comprehending the purpose
which thereby imbues us.

I believe, however, that you would not do this were we really what your press abroad
today makes us out to be, and I can only say to you: I do not even want you to vote for it!
Germany will be liberated, but not by you!

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Adolf Hitler - speech in Lustgarten, Berlin
"The Day of National Labor. "

May 1, 1933
German boys! German girls!

ee cheers for our Reich President, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the great soldier
and leader of the World War: Er lebe hoch, hoch, hoch!

German Volk, you are strong when you are one. German Volk, you are not second-class,
even if the world wants you to be a thousand times over. German Volk, forget fourteen years
of disintegration and rise up to two thousand years of German history!

German Volksgenossen! 'Der Mai ist gekommen. " That is how a German folksong
puts it. And for many centuries, the first day of May was not only symbolic of spring's arrival
in the countryside; it was also a day of joy, of festive spirits and sentiments.

There came a time when this day was enlisted for other purposes, and the day of new
life and hopeful joy was transformed into a day of quarrel and internal strife. A dogma which
had seized hold of our Volk attempted to transform the day of awakening nature, of the visible
approach of spring, into a day of hate, of fraternal strife, of discord, and of suffering.
Centuries passed by this German country, and this day seemed more and more destined to
document the division and disunity of our Volk. But there finally came a time of reflection,
too, after the deepest suffering had seized our Volk, a time of turning inward and for German
people to come together again.

And today we can once more join in singing the old folk song: "Der Mai ist gekommen.
"Our Volk's awakening has come to pass. The symbol of class conflict, of never-ending strife
and discord, is now becoming once again the symbol of the great unity and uprising of the
nation. And thus, for all time to come, we have chosen this day when nature awakens as the
day of regaining our own power and strength and, at the same time, the productive work
which knows no limits, which is not bound to unions or factories or offices; work we wish to
recognize and promote wherever it is performed in a positive sense for the very existence and
the life of our Volk.

The German Volk has a gruesome crisis behind it. But it is not as though this were due
to lack of industry, no! Millions in our Volk are working like before. Millions of peasants are
walking behind their plows as in the past, millions of workers are standing at the workbench,
hammering to the sound of the ringing anvil. Millions in our Volk are working, and millions
more want to work, but they cannot! Tens of thousands voluntarily put an end to an existence
which, for them, holds only grief and misery. They have traded it for the next world, in which
they hope for something more and better. Appalling suffering and misfortune have descended
upon us and brought, in their wake, despondency and even despair. And we now ask
ourselves, why? It is a political crisis. The German Volk has become disintegrated internally,
its entire vitality is being used up in the internal struggle. The ability to build on the power of
one's own will has dwindled, people's faith in the power of the individual has diminished.

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Millions are eyeing the rest of the world in the hope that it will bestow upon them good
fortune and well-being. The Volk is disintegrating, and its vitality, its power to assert its own
life, is fading with this disintegration. We see the consequences of this class conflict around
and within us, and we want to learn from this. For there is one thing we have recognized as
the primary requirement for the recovery of our Volk: the German Volk must once again
come to know itself! The millions of people divided into professions, separated into artificial
classes which, infested by arrogance of rank and class madness, are no longer able to
understand each other-they must find their way back together! A gigantic, tremendous task-
we know it! But when madness has been upheld and preached as a political idea for seventy
years, when the destruction of the Volksgemeinschaft has been the political rule for seventy
years, then it is difficult to seek to change people's minds overnight. We must not allow this
to let us become despondent and despair. What one man has built, another can tear down;
what human madness once created can be overcome by the power of reason.

We know that this process of coming to know and understand each other cannot be a
matter of weeks or months or even of a mere few years. We do, however, have the unshakable
will to accomplish this great task before German history, we have the resolution to lead
German people back together, and if necessary, to force them back together.

That is the meaning of May Day which shall be celebrated in Germany from now on
and throughout the centuries so that all those who are active in the great machinery of our
productive national work may join together and extend their hands to one another once a year
in the realization that nothing can be accomplished unless everyone contributes his share of
work and efforts. And thus, as our motto for this day, we have chosen the sentence, "Honor
the work, and respect the worker!" For millions, it is difficult to overcome all the hate and
misunderstandings which have been artificially cultivated in the past and find their way back
together. There is one realization which allows us to tread this path more easily.

Take a person who is working, wherever it may be-he should and must not forget that
his Volksgenosse, who is doing his duty just like him, is indispensable; that the nation does
not subsist on the work of a government, of a certain class or in the products of its
intelligence, but rather lives from the mutual and harmonious work of all! When millions
believe that the type of work itself is any indication of the worthiness of those who execute it,
this is a bitter mistake. There are many tens of thousands among us who want to make respect
for the individual dependent upon the type of work he does. No! Not what he does, but rather
how he does it must be the decisive factor. The fact that millions among us are industrious
year in, year out, without ever being able to hope to gain riches, or even only to achieve a life
without cares-that should oblige everyone to support them all the more. For it is their idealism
and their devotion alone which make it possible for the whole to exist and live. It would be a
sorry fate if today this idealism in our Volk were to fade and the value of an individual were
to be judged solely by the external fortunes of life which have fallen to his lot. The value of
our Volk would then no longer be great and its term of existence would not be long.

It is useless to explain to the worker that he is important or to prove to the peasant the
necessity of his existence; useless to approach the intellectual, the mental worker, in order to
make him understand the importance of what he does. It is necessary to teach each rank and
class the significance of the other ranks and classes. And therefore we want to go forth into
the cities to proclaim to them the necessity and the essentiality of the German peasant and go
out into the country and to our thinkers and teach them the significance of the German
working class. We want to go to the worker and to the peasant to teach them that there can be

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no German life unless there is a German spirit; that they all must unite to form a great
community: spirit, mind and hand, worker, peasant, and burgher.

This First of May shall also convey to the German Volk the realization that industry and
work alone do not make up life if they are not wed to the power and the will of a people.
Industry and work, power and will-only if they join forces, only when the strong fist of the
nation is raised to protect and shelter the work, only then can real blessings result. And this
day shall also make the German Volk conscious of one thing: German Volk! You are strong
when you are united, when you banish from your heart the spirit of class conflict and your
discord. You can place an enormous power behind your work if you unite that work with your
entire Volkstum 's will to live! We dream of a State of the German Nation which is capable of
once more securing our Volk's daily bread on earth, and we know that this requires the
concentrated force of the nation. Though today Marxism scoffs that this will never work, we
will provide proof that it does. My friends! Things that are great in this world are never free.
One must fight bitterly for everything; similarly, it will not be an easy matter for the uprising
of the Volk to become reality: it, too, requires an inner struggle. We should not complain
today; we know that we will earn this uprising, will earn the freedom of our Volk. And then it
will be proven that Marxism was no more than mere theory and, as such, attractive and
seductive, but in reality incapable of bringing real profit and good fortune to a people.

This First of May shall document that we do not intend to destroy, but rather plan to
build up. One should not choose the most beautiful spring day of the year as a symbol of
fight, but as a symbol of constructive work; not as an embodiment of decay and thus
disintegration, but only of volkisch solidarity and thus of rising up. It is no coincidence that
our opponents, who claim to have been celebrating this day for seventy years now and who
have been in power in Germany for fourteen years have not, in spite of everything, succeeded
in gaining hold of the German Volk on this day as we have done from the very beginning. The
Volk unconsciously perceives in its core that any celebration of the Marxist type was contrary
to the springtide season. It did not want hate, it did not want struggle, it wanted uplifting! And
today the Volk senses it: the First of May has recovered its true, intrinsic meaning. That is the
reason why millions throughout Germany are joyfully pouring forth to bear witness to a will
which desires to take part in the reconstruction of the nation. And while we observe this
holiday for the first time today, let us call to mind our aims for the time which lies before us:
without faltering shall we struggle to ensure that the power captured by the new concept, the
new political faith in Germany, will never again fade, but instead grow stronger and stronger.

We want to fight to ensure that this new idea rises above all of Germany and gradually
captivates the entire German Volk in its spell. With courage and determination, we want to
defend this flag of the resurrection of our Volk against anyone who believes he can tear it
down. We want to reawaken our Volk's self-esteem and self-confidence and attempt to
increase them on a permanent basis. We know the time which lies behind us and those who
typified it. They intentionally inoculated our Volk with the idea that it was, as a whole,
inferior in the world, incapable of great deeds, not worthy of the rights accorded all others.
They artificially cultivated inferiority complexes because this corresponded to the inferiority
of the parties which seduced this Volk for long years. We want to release the Volk from this
spell, want to continually impress upon it this belief: German Volk! You are not second-class,
even if the world wishes it so a thousand times over. You are not of lesser value, of lesser
significance. German Volk, remember what you are, remember your past and the
accomplishments of your fathers, of your very own generation! Forget fourteen years of
disintegration, and rise to two thousand years of German history! We have called out to you

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this way, my Volksgenossen throughout Germany, from the first day onwards to instill in all
of you this conviction from a feeling of inner solidarity: Germans ! You are a strong Volk if
you will yourself to be strong! The millions who are demonstrating in Germany today will
return home with the feeling of a newly won inner power and unity. I know, my comrades,
that tomorrow your tread will be firmer again than it was yesterday. For all of us feel it: today
it may be possible to rape the nation, to put it in chains-but it is no longer possible to break or
humiliate it! Thus it is also our desire on this day to fortify the confidence not only in
yourself, German Volk, no, but the confidence in your government, too, which feels bound to
you and is a part of you, which belongs to you, which fights with you for your life, which has
no other purpose but to make you, German Volk, free and happy once more.

And finally, today our solidarity is to be documented for all time by an act.

When we first presented the idea of compulsory labor service to the public, the
representatives of the dying Marxist world raised a great outcry, declaring, "That is a new
attack on the proletariat, an attack on work, an attack on the life of the worker!" Why did they
do that? They knew very well that it would never be an attack on work and much less an
attack on the worker, but merely an attack on a terrible prejudice, namely that manual labor is
inferior. We want to wipe out this prejudice in Germany. At a time when millions in our ranks
live without any comprehension of the significance of manual labor, we want to bring the
German Volk, by means of compulsory labor service, to the realization that manual labor does
not discredit, does not degrade, but rather, just as any other activity, does honor to him who
performs it faithfully and honestly.

It remains our firm decision to lead every single German, be he who he may, whether
rich or poor, whether the son of scholars or the son of factory workers, to experience manual
labor once in his lifetime so that he can come to know it, so that he can here one day more
easily take command because he has learned obedience in the past. We intend by no means to
eliminate Marxism only in an external sense. We are resolved to remove its very foundations.
We want to spare coming generations the mental confusion it causes.

Mental and manual workers must never be allowed to be on opposite sides.

For this reason we are exterminating that feeling of arrogance which so readily befalls
the individual and makes him look down upon comrades who "only" stand at the workbench
or the machine or walk behind the plow. Not only must every German become acquainted at
least once with this type of work, but viceversa, too: the manual worker must realize that
mental work is also necessary.

And he must be taught that no one has the right to look down upon others, to imagine
oneself something better; rather, each must be willing to join the great community.

This year for the first time we will turn this great ethical concept, which we connect
with the Arbeit sdienst, into reality. And we know that when forty years have passed, the term
manual work will have undergone a change in meaning for millions of people, just as the term
Landsknecht has come to be replaced by the concept of the German soldier.

This year we will also accomplish the great task of liberating creative initiative from the
disastrous influences of majority resolutions. Not only in parliament, but in the economy as
well. We know that our economy cannot advance unless a synthesis can take place between

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the freedom of the creative spirit and the obligation to the Volk as a whole. Thus it will also
be our task to give to the treaties the meaning they deserve. Man does not live for the sake of
treaties; treaties are there in order to make it possible for man to live. And finally, this year we
will endeavor to finish the first lap on the way to an organic management of the economy, and
we will proceed on the basic realization that there is no advancement which does not begin at
the root of national, volkisch and economic life: the peasant. There begins the path which
leads to the worker and further on to the intellectual.

Thus we will begin with our husbandman and, as first priority, lead his business back to
health. We know that this is the foremost prerequisite for the recovery of the rest of the
economy. The opposite has been done now for fourteen years. And we are witnessing the
results. It has helped neither the urban dweller nor the worker nor the Mittelstand-they have
all been forced to the brink of destruction.

And this leads to yet another task: the elimination of unemployment by a program
providing employment. We are dividing this employment program into two parts. First of all,
there is private provision of employment. Before the year is over, we will have set out to
accomplish a work of greatness, a work which will put German structures and buildings back
in order and thus provide work for hundreds of thousands. At this time and in this place, we
want to direct our appeal to the German Volk for the first time: German Volk! Do not believe
that the problem of providing employment will be solved in the stars. You yourself must lend
a hand toward solving it. You must do everything you can out of understanding and trust to
provide work. Each and every person has the duty not to hesitate to provide that which he
requires; not to wait to produce what he will once have to produce. Every entrepreneur, every
property owner, every businessman, every private person has the duty to bear German labor in
mind. Since today the world is circulating untrue allegations against us, since German labor is
being denounced, we must expect each German to take on his work. This is an appeal which,
directed to millions of individuals, is best able to provide work for millions of people. We will
also attempt to provide public employment opportunities on a large scale within the current
year. We are installing a program which we do not want to pass on to posterity, the program
of building a new road system, a gigantic undertaking which will require billions. We will
sweep away resistance and make a great beginning. We will thereby introduce a series of
public work projects which will help to steadily decrease the unemployment rate.

We want to work and we will work! However, in the end everything depends upon the
German Volk itself, on you, on the confidence you place in us; it depends on the force of your
belief in the national State. Only when you all unite in the single will to save Germany will
the German individual be able to find his salvation in Germany. We know that we still have
tremendous difficulties to overcome. We also know that all human labors are doomed to fail if
they are not blessed by the light of Providence. But we do not belong to those who
comfortably rely on a hereafter. Nothing will be given us for free. Just as, for us, the road
from the past fourteen years to the present day has been a road of incessant struggle, a road
which often led us near despair, the road to a better future will also be difficult. The world is
persecuting us, it is turning against us, it does not wish to recognize our right to live, does not
want to admit that we have a right to protect our homeland.

My German Volksgenossen! The fact that the world is so against us is all the more
reason why we must become a unified whole; all the more reason for us to continually assure
the world: you can do whatever you want! But you will never break us, never force us to
submit to any yoke! You will no longer be able to wipe out the cry for equal rights in our

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Volk! The German Volk has come to its senses. It will no longer tolerate people in its midst
who are not for Germany! We want to earn the renewed ascent of the nation by honest means,
through our industry, our persistence, our unshakable will! We are not asking of the
Almighty, "Lord, make us free!" We want to take an active part, to work, to accept one
another as brothers and unite in a common struggle so that one day the hour will come when
we can step before the Lord and have the right to ask of Him, "Lord, You can see that we
have changed. The German Volk is no longer a Volk of infamy, shame, self-reproach,
faintheartedness, and little faith.

No, Lord, the German Volk is once again strong in its will, strong in its persistence, strong in
bearing any sacrifice. Lord, we will not give You up! Now bless our fight for our freedom and
thus our German Volk und Vaterland!"

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Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag

Berlin, May 17, 1933

s jTI eputies, Ladies and Gentlemen of the German Reichstag! In the name of the Reich
j H Government I have asked the Reichstag President to convene the Reichstag so that
\S I may take a stand before this forum on the questions which today affect not only
our Volk but the entire world.

The problems which you know so well are of such great significance that not only
political pacification, but the economic salvation of all are contingent upon finding a
satisfactory solution.

When I express the desire on behalf of the German Government that the handling of
these problems be totally removed from the sphere of passion, I do this not least of all in the
realization dominating us all, namely that the crisis of our time owes its deepest origin alone
to those passions which dimmed the insight and intelligence of the nations after the War.

For all of the problems causing today's unrest lie anchored in the deficiencies of the
Peace Treaty, which was unable to provide a judicious, clear and reasonable solution for the
most important and most decisive questions of the time for all ages to come. Neither the
national problems nor the economic - not to mention the legal-problems and demands of the
peoples were solved by virtue of this Treaty in a manner which would allow them to
withstand the criticism of reason for all time. Thus it is understandable that the idea of a
revision is not only an integral part of the lasting side effects of the consequences of this
Treaty; indeed, the necessity of revision was foreseen by its authors and hence given a legal
foundation in the Treaty itself.

When I deal briefly here with the problems this Treaty should have solved, I am doing
so because the failure in these areas inevitably led to the subsequent situations under which
the political and economic relations between nations have been suffering since then.

The political problems are as follows: in the course of many centuries, the European
nations and their borders evolved from concepts which were based exclusively upon the idea
of a political State as such. With the triumphant assertion of the national idea and the principle
of nationalities in the course of the past century, the seeds of numerous conflicts were sown as
a result of the failure of States which had arisen under different circumstances to take these
new ideas and ideals into account. At the end of the Great War, there could have been no
greater task for a real peace conference than to undertake, in the clear recognition of this fact,
a territorial and political reorganization of the European States which would do justice to this
principle to the greatest possible degree.

The more closely the borders between peoples coincided with the borders between
States, the more this would have done away with a whole series of future potential conflicts.
In fact, this territorial reorganization of Europe, taking into account the actual borders
between peoples, would have constituted the solution in history which, with a view to the
future, might have allowed both victors and vanquished to perceive that the blood sacrifices of
the Great War were perhaps not completely in vain, for they might have served the world as
the foundations for a real peace.

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As it was, solutions were chosen-partly due to ignorance, partly to passion and hatred-
which contained the perpetual seed of fresh conflicts in their very lack of logic and fairness.

The economic problems the conference was to have solved are as follows: The present
economic situation in Europe is characterized by the overpopulation of the European West
and, in the land comprising this territory, by the dearth of certain raw materials which are
indispensable for the customary standard of living in these very areas with their ancient
culture. Had one wished to bring about a certain pacification of Europe for the humanly
foreseeable future, it would have been necessary-instead of relying upon the unproductive and
dangerous concepts of penance, punishment, reparation, etc. -to rely upon and take into
account the deep realization that lack of means of existence has always been a source of
conflict between peoples. Instead of preaching the precepts of destruction, one would have
had to initiate a reorganization of the international, political and economic relations which
would have done justice to the vital needs of each individual people to the fullest possible
extent.

It is unwise to deprive a people of the economic resources necessary for its existence
without taking the fact into consideration that the population dependent upon them must of
necessity continue to live in this territory. It is absurd to believe that one is performing a
useful service to other peoples by economically destroying a people numbering 65 million.
Peoples who would proceed in such a manner would very soon, under the laws of nature
linking cause and effect, come to experience that they would be subjected to the same
catastrophe which they intended to impose upon another people. One day the concept of
reparations and their enforcement will become a classic example in the history of nations of
the extent to which disregard for international welfare can be damaging to all.

As it was, reparation politics could be financed only by German exports.

The export industry of the creditor states was made to suffer to the same extent to which
Germany, because of the reparations, was regarded as a sort of international export company.
Hence the economic advantages of the reparation payments could bear no relation to the
damage caused to the individual economies by these reparations.

The attempt to avoid this development by compensating for the limits placed on
German exports by means of granting loans to make the payments possible lacked
circumspection and was ultimately wrong. For the conversion of political debts to private
obligations led to an interest requirement, the fulfillment of which unavoidably produced the
same results. However, the worst of the matter was that the development of domestic
economic life was artificially checked and destroyed. Competition in the world markets by a
constant undercutting of prices led to an overintensification of rationalizing measures in the
economy.

The millions of our unemployed constitute the final consequence of this development.
Were one inclined to limit the reparation obligations to deliveries of goods, this would result
in no less substantial damage to the domestic production of the peoples profiting from them.
This is because deliveries of goods in the magnitude in question are not conceivable without
acute danger to the continued existence of the peoples' own production.

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The Treaty of Versailles is to blame for having inaugurated a period in which the
mathematical genius of finance is bringing about the demise of economic reason.

Germany has fulfilled these obligations imposed upon it, in spite of their inherent lack
of reason and the foreseeable consequences, so faithfully as to be virtually suicidal.

The international economic crisis is the indisputable proof of the correctness of this
statement.

The plan of restoring a general international sense of justice was no less destroyed by
the Treaty.

In order to justify all of the measures of this edict, Germany had to be branded as the
guilty party. This is a procedure which is, however, just as simple as it is impossible. This
would mean that in future, the vanquished will always bear the blame for conflicts, for the
victor will always be in a position to simply establish this as a fact.

This procedure therefore assumed a terrible significance because, at the same time, it
served as a reason for transforming the relative strength existing at the end of this War to a
lasting legal status. The concepts of victor and vanquished were hence made to constitute the
foundations of a new international legal and social order.

The degradation of a great people to a second-rate, second-class nation was proclaimed
in the same breath with which a League of Nations was called into being.

This treatment of Germany could not lead to a pacification of the world. The
disarmament and defenselessness of the vanquished which was considered necessary-an
unheard of procedure in the history of the European nations-was even less suited to diminish
the general dangers and conflicts; rather, it led to a state of affairs consisting of those
perpetual threats, demands and sanctions which threaten to become, by virtue of the continual
unrest and insecurity they cause, the death of the entire economy. If, in the lives of peoples,
every consideration of the risks involved in certain actions is omitted, unreason will all too
easily triumph over reason. At any rate, until now the League of Nations has been incapable
of providing appreciable assistance to the weak and unarmed on such occasions. Treaties
which are concluded for the pacification of the lives of peoples in relation to one another have
any real meaning only when they are based upon a genuine and honest equality of rights for
all. And this is the main reason for the turmoil which has dominated the world for years.

Finding a reasonable and lasting solution to the problems existing today lies in the
interests of all. No new European war would be capable of bringing about anything better in
place of the unsatisfactory conditions of the present.

On the contrary: the use of any type of violence in Europe could not serve to create a
more favorable political and economic situation than exists today.

Even if a fresh violent European solution were a decisive factor in solving the problems,
the final result would be an increase in the disturbance to the balance of power in Europe, and
therefore, one way or another, the seed of further conflicts and complications would be sown.

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New wars, new uncertainty, and a new economic crisis would be the consequences. The
outbreak of such madness without end would, however, lead to the collapse of today's social
and political order. A Europe sinking into Communist chaos would give rise to a crisis of
unforeseeable proportions and unpredictable length.

It is the earnest desire of the National Government of the German Reich to prevent such
an unpeaceful development by means of its honest and active cooperation.

This is also the real meaning behind the radical change which has taken place in
Germany. The three factors which dominate our revolution do not contradict the interests of
the rest of the world in any way.

First: preventing the impending Communist subversion and constructing a Volksstaat
uniting the various interests of the classes and ranks, and maintaining the concept of personal
property as the foundation of our culture. Second: solving the most pressing social problems
by leading the army of millions of our pitiful unemployed back to production. Third: restoring
a stable and authoritarian leadership of the State, supported by the confidence and will of the
nation which will finally again make of this great Volk a legitimate partner to the rest of the
world.

Speaking now, conscious of being a German National Socialist, I would like to proclaim
on behalf of the National Government and the entire national uprising that, above all, we in
this young Germany are filled with the deepest understanding of the same feelings and
convictions and the justified demands of the other nations to live. The generation of this
young Germany, which until now has come in its lifetime to know only the want, misery and
distress of its own Volk, has suffered too dearly from this madness to be capable of
contemplating subjecting others to more of the same.

In that we are devoted to our own identity as a Volk in boundless love and faith, we also
respect the national rights of other peoples on the basis of a common conviction and desire
from the very bottom of our hearts to live with them in peace and friendship.

Thus the concept of Germanization is alien to us. The mentality of the past century, on
the basis of which it was believed possible to make Germans of Poles and Frenchmen, is
foreign to us, just as we passionately reject any respective attempt in the opposite direction.
We view the European nations as a given fact. The French, the Poles, etc. are our neighbors,
and we know that no historically conceivable event can change this reality.

It would have been fortunate for the world had these realities been given due
consideration in respect to Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. For the object of a genuinely
lasting treaty should not be to cut open fresh wounds or keep existing ones open, but rather to
close and heal the wounds. A judicious handling of the problems could easily have arrived at
a solution in the East which would have accommodated both the understandable claims of
Poland as well as the natural rights of Germany. The Treaty of Versailles failed to provide this
solution. In spite of this, no German Government will of its own accord violate an agreement
which cannot be eliminated without being replaced by a better one.

Yet this recognition of the legal character of such a treaty can be merely a general one.
Not only the victor, but the vanquished as well has claim to the rights accorded it therein. But
the right to demand a revision of the Treaty lies anchored in the Treaty itself. The German

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Government wishes to base the reasons for and the extent of its claims on nothing other than
the present results of past experiences and the incontestable consequences of critical and
logical reasoning. The experiences of the last fourteen years are both politically and
economically unequivocal.

The misery of the peoples was not alleviated; instead, it increased. The deepest root of
this misery lies, however, in the division of the world into victor and vanquished as the
intended permanent basis for all treaties and any future order. The worst effects of this order
are expressed in the forced defenselessness of one nation in the face of an exaggerated
armament on the part of the others.

The reasons why Germany has been staunchly demanding universal disarmament for
years are as follows: First of all, the demand for equality of rights expressed in actual facts is
a demand of morality, right and reason; a demand which was acknowledged in the Treaty
itself and the fulfillment of which was indissolubly tied to the demand for German
disarmament as a starting point for world disarmament.

Secondly, because conversely the degradation of a great Volk cannot be maintained in
history forever but must of necessity one day come to an end.

How long is it believed to be possible to impose such an injustice upon a great nation?
What is the advantage of the moment worth in comparison to the ongoing developments of
centuries? The German Volk will continue to exist, just as the French and, as we have learned
from historical evolution, the Polish have done. What significance and what value can the
successful short-term oppression of a people of 65 million have in comparison to the force of
these incontrovertible facts? No State can have a greater understanding of the newly
established young European national States than the Germany of the National Revolution
which has arisen from the same will. It wants nothing for itself which it is not prepared to
accord to others.

When Germany today lodges the demand for genuine equality of rights in respect to the
disarmament of the other nations, it has a moral right to do so given its own fulfillment of the
treaties. For Germany did disarm, and Germany performed this disarmament under the
strictest international control. Six million rifles and carbines were handed over or destroyed;
the German Volk was forced to destroy or surrender 130,000 machine guns, huge amounts of
machine gun barrels, 91,000 pieces of artillery, 38.75 million shells, and an enormous supply
of other weapons and munitions.

The Rhineland was demilitarized, the German fortresses were pulled down, our ships
surrendered, the aircraft destroyed, our military system was abandoned, and thus the training
of reserves prevented. Even the most needed weapons of defense were denied us.

If, in the face of these indisputable facts, anyone should come forward today, citing
truly pitiful excuses and pretexts and claiming that Germany did not comply with the Treaty
and had even rearmed, I must reject this view at this time for being as untrue as it is unfair.

It is equally incorrect to claim that Germany has not complied with the provisions of the
Treaty in respect to personnel. The allegation that the SA and the SS of the National Socialist
Party are connected in any way with the Reichswehr in the sense that they represent
formations with military training or army reserves is untrue! A single example serves to

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illustrate the irresponsible thoughtlessness with which such allegations are made: last year in
Briinn, members of the National Socialist Party in Czechoslovakia were put to trial. Sworn
experts of the Czech Army claimed that the defendants maintained connections to the
National Socialist Party in Germany, were dependent upon it and thus, as members of a
popular sports club (Volkssportverein), were to be equated with members of the SA and SS in
Germany which constituted a reserve army trained and organized by the Reichswehr.

At the same time, however, the SA and SS-just as the National Socialist Party itself-not
only had no connection with the Reichswehr whatsoever: on the contrary, they were regarded
as organizations hostile to the State and persecuted, banned, and finally dissolved. And even
beyond that: members of the National Socialist Party and those belonging to the SA and SS
were not only excluded from all public offices -they were not even allowed to take on
employment as simple workers in an army company. Nonetheless, the National Socialists in
Czechoslovakia were given long prison sentences on the basis of this false view. In reality, the
SA and the SS of the National Socialist Party have evolved totally without aid, totally without
financial support from the State, the Reich, or even less the Reichswehr; without any sort of
military training and without any sort of military equipment, out of pure party political needs
and in accordance with party political considerations. Their purpose was and is exclusively
confined to the elimination of the Communist threat, and their training, which bears no
connection to the Army, was designed solely for the purposes of propaganda and
enlightenment, mass psychological effect, and the crushing of Communist terror.

They are institutions for instilling a true community spirit, overcoming former class
differences, and alleviating economic want.

The Stahlhelm came into being in memory of the great age of the common experiences
at the front, to nurture established traditions, maintain comrade- ship, and finally also to
protect the German Volk from the Communist revolution which has been threatening the Volk
since November 1918, a threat which admittedly cannot be fathomed by countries who have
never had millions of organized Communists as we have and have not suffered at the hands of
terror as Germany has. For the real objective of these national organizations is best
characterized by the type of struggle in which they are actually engaged, and the toll this has
taken. As a consequence of Communist slayings and acts of terror in the space of only a few
years, the SA and SS suffered over 350 dead and about 40,000 injured. If today the attempt is
being made in Geneva to add these organizations which exclusively serve domestic purposes
to the Armed Forces figure, then one might as well count the fire brigades, the gymnastics
clubs, the security corps, the rowing clubs, and other sports organizations as members of the
Armed Forces, too.

However, when at the same time the trained annual contingents of the other armies of
the world are not included, in contrast to these men totally lacking in military training; when
one deliberately overlooks the armed reserves of the others while commencing to count the
unarmed members of our political associations, we have before us a procedure against which I
must lodge the sharpest protest! If the world wishes to destroy confidence in what is right and
just, these are the best means of doing so.

On behalf of the German Volk and the German Government, I must make the following
clear: Germany has disarmed. It has fulfilled the obligations imposed upon it in the Peace
Treaty to an extent far beyond the limits of what can be deemed fair or even reasonable. Its
army consists of 100,000 men. The strength and character of its police is internationally
regulated.

137

The auxiliary police instituted in the days of the Revolution is exclusively political in
character. In those critical days, it replaced the other part of the police which, at the time, the
new regime suspected of being unstable. Now that the Revolution has been successfully
carried through, this force is already being depleted and will be completely dissolved even
before the year is over. Germany thus has a fully justified moral right to insist that the other
powers also fulfill their obligations pursuant to the Treaty of Versailles. The equality of rights
accorded to Germany in December has not yet become reality. Since France has repeatedly
asserted that the safety of France must be given the same consideration as Germany's equality
of rights, I would like to pose two questions in this regard: 1. So far, Germany has accepted
all of the obligations in respect to security arising from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles,
the Kellogg Pact, the Treaties of Arbitration, the Pact of NonAggression, etc. What other
concrete assurances are there which Germany could assume? 2. On the other hand, what
security does Germany have? According to the information of the League of Nations, France
alone has 3,046 aircraft in service while Belgium has 350, Poland 700, and Czechoslovakia
670. In addition, there are innumerable quantities of reserve aircraft, thousands of armored
vehicles, thousands of pieces of heavy artillery, and all of the technical means required to
conduct warfare with chemical gases. Doesn't Germany have more reason, in view of its lack
of defenses and weapons, to demand security than the armed states united by alliances?
Germany is nonetheless prepared at any time to assume further obligations to ensure
international security if all other nations are willing to do so as well and Germany also
benefits from this step. Germany would also be more than willing to disband its entire
military establishment and destroy those few weapons still remaining at its disposal, were the
bordering nations to do the same without exception. However, if the other States are not
willing to comply with the disarmament provisions imposed upon them by the Peace Treaty
of Versailles, then Germany must, at the very least, insist upon its demand for equal
treatment. The German Government sees in the British plan a possible basis for the answer to
these questions. However, it must demand that it not be forced to destroy an existing military
institution without being granted at least qualitatively equal rights. Germany must demand
that any commutation of the military institution in Germany-an institution we do not want in
Germany, but one which was forced upon us from abroad-is performed only to the extent of
the actual disarmament performed concurrently by the other States.

In this connection, Germany is essentially willing to agree to a transitional period of
five years to bring about its national security in the expectation that, subsequent thereto,
Germany will be accorded genuine equality with the other States. Germany is also perfectly
prepared to completely abandon offensive weapons if, within a certain period, the armed
nations destroy their own offensive weapons in turn and the use of such weapons is banned by
international convention. It is Germany's sole desire to maintain its independence and be in a
position to protect its borders.

According to a statement made in February 1932 by the French Minister of War, a large
portion of the colored French troops are available for immediate use on the French mainland.
He therefore has explicitly included them in the home forces.

Thus it is only fair to take the colored forces into account as an integral part of the
French Army in the disarmament conference as well. Although one refuses to do this, one
nevertheless proposes counting associations and organizations as part of the German Army
which serve purely educational and sporting purposes and are given no military training

138

whatsoever. In the other countries, there is no question of these types of associations being
counted as part of military strength. This is obviously a completely impossible procedure.

Germany would also be willing at any time, in the event that an objective international
arms control board is created, to subject the associations in question to such control-given the
same willingness on the part of the other States-in order to demonstrate to the whole world its
wholly unmilitary character. Furthermore, the German Government will reject no ban on arms
as being too drastic if it is likewise applied to the other States.

These demands do not mean rearmament, but rather a desire for the disarmament of the
other States. On behalf of the German Government, I may once again welcome the farsighted
and just plan of the Italian Head of State to create, by means of a special pact, close relations
of confidence and cooperation between the four major European powers, Great Britain,
France, Italy, and Germany. Mussolini's view that this would serve as a bridge to facilitate an
understanding is a view with which the German Government agrees out of its most deeply
seated convictions. It desires to oblige to the fullest possible extent if the other nations as well
are inclined to genuinely overcome any difficulties which may stand in the way.

Thus the proposal made by the American President Roosevelt, of which I learned last
night, deserves the warmest thanks of the German Government.

The Government is prepared to consent to this method for solving the international
crisis, for it is of the opinion that, if the question of disarmament is not solved, permanent
economic reconstruction is inconceivable. It is willing to make a selfless contribution to this
task of restoring the political and economic state of the world to order. It is also, as I have
stressed in the beginning, of the conviction that there can only be one great task in our time:
securing peace in the world.

I feel obliged to state that the reason for today's armament in France or Poland can
under no circumstances be the fear of these nations of a German invasion. For such a fear
would only be justified by the existence of modern offensive weapons. But these modern
offensive weapons are exactly the ones which Germany does not have: it has neither heavy
artillery nor tanks nor bombers nor poisonous gases.

The only nation which has reason to fear an invasion is the German nation, which is not
only barred from having offensive weapons, but even restricted in its right to possess
defensive weapons and prohibited from erecting fortifications on its borders. Germany is
prepared to renounce offensive weapons at any time if the rest of the world does the same.
Germany is willing to join any solemn pact of non-aggression, for Germany's concern is not
offensive warfare, but its own security.

Germany would welcome the opportunity suggested in President Roosevelt's proposal
of incorporating the United States in European relations in the role of guarantor of peace. This
proposal signifies a great consolation to all those who wish to seriously cooperate toward
maintaining peace. Our one most fervent desire is to contribute toward permanently healing
the wounds inflicted by the War and the Treaty of Versailles. And Germany will take no path
other than that which is recognized by the treaties themselves as just. The German Goverment
wishes to engage in peaceful discussions with the other nations on all difficult questions. It
knows that, given any military action in Europe, even if it be completely successful, the losses
thus incurred would bear no relation to the gains.

139

Under no circumstances, however, will the German Government and the German Volk
allow themselves to be coerced into signing anything which would constitute a perpetuation
of Germany's degradation. Any attempt to influence the Government and the Volk with
threats will be to no avail. It is conceivable that, contrary to everything which is right and
moral, Germany could be raped; it is, however, inconceivable and out of the question that
such an act could be accorded legitimacy by means of our own signature.

The attempt has been made in newspaper articles and regrettable speeches to threaten
Germany with sanctions, but a method as monstrous as this can only be the punishment for
the fact that, by demanding disarmament, we are asking that the treaties be fulfilled. Such a
measure could lead only to the ultimate moral and factual invalidation of the treaties
themselves. But even in that case, Germany would never give up its peaceful demands. The
political and economic consequences-the chaos which such an attempt would cause in
Europe-would be the responsibility of those who resorted to such measures to fight a people
which is doing no harm to the world.

Any such attempt, any attempt at doing violence to Germany by means of forming a
simple majority against the unequivocal spirit of the treaties could only be dictated by the
intention of excluding us from the conferences. But today the German Volk possesses enough
character to refrain, in such an event, from forcing its cooperation upon the other nations; it
would rather, albeit with a heavy heart, draw the only possible conclusions.

It would be difficult for us to remain a member of the League of Nations as a Volk
subjected to constant degradation. The German Government and the German Volk are aware
of the present crisis. For years, warnings have come from Germany to desist from the methods
which have inevitably produced this political and economic state of affairs. If the present
course is held and the present methods are continued, there can be no doubt as to the final
result.

Seeming political successes on the part of individual nations will be followed by all the
more severe economic and hence political catastrophes affecting all. We regard it as our first
and foremost task to prevent this.

No effective action has been undertaken to date. The rest of the world tells us that one did, in
fact, harbor a certain amount of sympathy for the former Germany; now at least we have
become acquainted with the consequences and effects of this "sympathy" in Germany and for
Germany! Millions of lives destroyed, entire trades ruined, and an enormous army of
unemployed-an inconsolable wretchedness, the extent and depth of which I would like to
convey to the rest of the world today in a single figure: Since the day when this Treaty was
signed, which was, as a work of peace, to be the foundation for a new and better age for all
peoples, there have been 224,000 people in our German Volk who, moved almost exclusively
by want and misery, have chosen to take their own lives-men and women, young and old
alike! These incorruptible witnesses are an indictment against the spirit and fulfillment of a
treaty, from the effects of which not only the rest of the world, but also millions of people in
Germany once expected salvation and good fortune. May this also serve to make the other
nations understand Germany's unshakable will and determination to finally put an end to a era
of human aberration in order to find the way to an ultimate consensus of all on the basis of
equal rights.

140

Adolf Hitler - excerptions of speeches at the

Party Congress in Nuremberg
(1-3.09.1933) 1

Adolf Hitler's proclamation was read at the opening
of the Party Congress.

September 1, 1933

^tYower and the brutal use of force can accomplish much, but in the long run, no state
IHof affairs is secure unless it appears logical in and of itself and intellectually
IT irrefutable. And above all: the National Socialist Movement must profess its faith
in the heroism which prefers any degree of opposition and hardship to even once denying the
principles it has recognized as right. It may be filled only by a single fear, namely that one
day a time might come when we are accused of insincerity or thoughtlessness. The heroic idea
must, however, be constantly willing to renounce the approval of the present if sincerity and
truth so require.

Just as the hero has renounced his life to live on in the Pantheon of history, so must a
truly great movement perceive in the Tightness of its concept, in the sincerity of its actions the
talisman which will safely lead it from a transient present to an immortal future.

The Fuhrer's words against the modern art

^^J« / ne

September 1, 1933

le fact that something has never existed before is no proof for the quality of an
accomplishment; it can just as easily be evidence for an inferiority which has
'never existed prior thereto. Thus if a so-called artist perceives his sole purpose in
life as presenting the most confusing and incomprehensible portrayals of the accomplishments
of the past or the present, the actual accomplishments of the past will nevertheless remain
accomplishments, while the artistic stammerings of the painting, music, sculpture, and
architecture produced by these types of charlatans will one day be nothing but proof of the
magnitude of a nation's downfall.

1 Adolf Hitler said about the party congresses in Nuremberg: "I have resolved to order that our Parteitage will
take place in this city now and for all time."

141

Adolf Hitler statement to the foreign diplomats

September 2, 1933

(jj[ would be happy if the gentlemen would leave Nuremberg with the impression that
/ J| the National Socialist Rule in Germany was not a rule of force or, much less,
V. tyranny, but that here the voice of the Volk truly found its innermost and deepest
expression.

Adolf Hitler proclaimed to the assembled Hitler Youth:

September 2, 1933

ou, my boys, you are the living Germany of the future, not some empty idea, not
some faint shadow, but the blood of our blood, the flesh of our flesh, the spirit of
our spirit, you are the future of our Volk personified.

The Fuhrer's words to the Amts waiter

September 2, 1933

(jjf t is your duty to ensure that every German, regardless of class and regardless of
.JJ origins, be put through this weltanschaulich and political school which you
v represent.

Adolf Hitler address to the SA and SS.
(excerptions)

September 3, 1933

le Party Congress of our Movement has always been a great military parade of its
men, its men who are determined and willing to not only uphold the discipline of
''the community of the Volk in a theoretical sense, but to put it into practice. A
community with no respect to origin, class, profession, assets, or education. A community
which has come together, united in a single great faith and in a single great will, united not
only for one rank, not for parties, not for professions, and not for classes, but united for our
Germany.

Fourteen years of want, misery and humiliation lie behind us. In these fourteen years,
however, a new, miraculous ideal has also asserted itself in our German Volk. We National
Socialists have every right to say: when everyone became disloyal, we remained loyal and
became truly loyal-an alliance of unswerving loyalty, unswerving comradeship, and if the
Goddess of Fortune turned away from our Volk for fourteen years, we know it was because
our Volk had itself to blame. But we also know that she will turn her gaze upon us once more
when we have atoned for our guilt. May Heaven be our witness: the guilt of our Volk is

142

extinguished, the crimes punished, the disgrace blotted out! The Men of November have been
felled, and their tyranny is over.

Communism is not a higher evolutionary stage, but the most primitive basic form of
shaping peoples and nations.

[...]

In devoting ourselves in this way to caring for our own blood, a blood which Fate has
entrusted to us, we are best helping to protect other peoples from diseases which spread from
race to race and from Volk to Volk. If a single Volk were to fall prey to Bolshevism in
Western or Central Europe, this poison would continue its corrosive work and devastate
today's oldest and most beautiful cultural possession on earth. In taking this fight upon itself,
Germany is but fulfilling, as so often in its history, a truly European mission.

143

Adolf Hitler - speech about Winterhilfe (Winter Relief)

Berlin, September 13, 1933

Gentlemen!

Qjlt'or many years we have fought at home against the idea of international Marxist
3 If solidarity. We perceived in this supposed international solidarity only the enemy of

a truly national attitude, a phantom which drew men away from the only
reasonable solidarity there can be: from the solidarity eternally rooted in the blood.

But we have also always been conscious of the fact that one cannot eliminate this idea
without having another take its place. Thus the motto governing this great act of assistance
must be the phrase, "National Solidarity." We have smashed international Marxist solidarity
within our Volk in order to give the millions of German workers another and better solidarity
in exchange. It is the solidarity of our own Volk, the indivisible bond not only in good times,
but also in bad; a bond not only with those who are blessed by good fortune, but also with
those who are dogged by fate.

If we correctly understand this idea of national solidarity, we must understand it as an
idea of sacrifice, i.e. if someone says it is too much of a burden, that one is constantly
required to give, then the only reply is: "But that happens to be the meaning of a true national
solidarity." Taking cannot be the meaning of any true national solidarity.

If one part of our Volk has come to suffer hardships due to circumstances for which all
are responsible, and the other part, spared by fate, is willing of its own volition to take upon
itself only a part of this hardship which has been forcefully imposed upon the other, all we
can say is: a certain amount of hardship should be intentionally imposed upon a part of our
Volk so that this part may aid in making the hardships of the other more bearable. The greater
the willingness to make such sacrifices, all the more quickly will the hardships of the other
side be able to be reduced.

Every person must understand that giving only has any real value, in the sense of
bringing about a true Volksgemeinschaft, when the act of giving involves a sacrifice on the
part of the giver. This is ultimately the only way to build up the superior solidarity to which
we must aspire if we want to overcome the other solidarity.

When this Volk has correctly grasped the fact that these measures must mean sacrifice
to everyone, then these measures will not only result in alleviating material want but will also
produce something much more tremendous-the conviction that this community of the Volk is
not merely an empty phrase, but something which is really alive. We need this community
more than ever in the difficult struggle of the nation. Were Germany blessed by good fortune,
it might be able to be accorded somewhat less significance. But when we are made to endure
difficult times, we must be conscious of the fact that these can only be overcome if our Volk
holds together like a single block of steel.

We will only be able to achieve this if the masses of millions who are not blessed by
good fortune are given the feeling that those who are more favored by fortune feel with them

144

and are willing to voluntarily make a sacrifice in order to document to the entire world the
indivisible solidarity of our Volk.

Whatever the German Volk sacrifices today will-and everyone can be assured of this-be
refunded to our Volk in kind, with interest and compound interest; for what are material
sacrifices made voluntarily in contrast to the greatest gift, namely the gift of being a joint,
unified Volk which feels that it belongs together, which is willing to set upon its earthly path
of destiny as one and to fight a united struggle? The blessing which comes from this
mutuality, from this national solidarity, is much greater and much more beneficial than the
sacrifice which the individual person makes for its sake. This campaign against hunger and
cold must stand under the motto: we have smashed the international solidarity of the
proletariat, and in its place we shall build the living national solidarity of the German Volk.

145

Adolf Hitler - radio broadcast

Berlin, October 14, 1933

(jifn November 1918, when the German Volk lowered its arms in trusting faith in the
.JJ assurances laid down in President Wilson's Fourteen Points, an illfated struggle
v came to a close for which individual statesmen, but certainly not the peoples of the
world might be held responsible. The German Volk fought so valiantly only because it was of
the sacred conviction that it had been unjustly attacked and was thus justly engaged in battle.
The other nations had no conception of the magnitude of the sacrifices which the Volk-left
almost entirely on its own-was forced to make. If in these months the world had stretched out
its hand in fairness to its prostrate opponent, humanity would have been spared much
suffering and countless disappointments.

The German Volk experienced the deepest disappointment. Never before had a
vanquished nation made such a sincere effort to help heal the wounds of its opponents as the
German Volk had in the long years it fulfilled the dictates burdened upon it. And the fact that
all of these sacrificies were unable to bring about a real pacification of the peoples was due
only to the nature of a treaty which, by attempting to perpetuate the concepts of victor and
vanquished, had to perpetuate hatred and enmity as well.

The peoples had a right to expect that a lesson would be learned from this, the greatest
war in world history, the lesson of how little-particularly for the European nations-the size of
the sacrifices corresponded to the size of what could possibly be gained. Therefore, when the
German Volk was required in this Treaty to destroy its arms in order to make general world
disarmament possible, a great number believed that this was no more than a symbol for the
spreading of a redeeming realization.

The German Volk destroyed its weapons! Relying upon the contractual fidelity of its
former enemies at war, it fulfilled the treaties with a truly fanatical loyalty. On water, on land,
and in the air, immeasurable quantities of war materials were dismantled, destroyed or
scrapped. At the request of the dictating powers, a small professional army with wholly
inadequate military equipment took the place of what had once been an army of millions.
However, at that time the political leadership of the nation was in the hands of men whose
spiritual roots lay exclusively in the world of the victorious nations.

The German Volk had a right to expect that, for this reason alone, the rest of the world
would keep its promise just as the German Volk had worked, in the sweat of its labor, with
thousandfold hardships and unspeakable privations, to fulfill its own contractual obligation.

No war can become the permanent condition of mankind. No peace can be the
perpetuation of war. At some point, victors and vanquished must find their way back to the
community of mutual understanding and trust. For a decade and a half, the German Volk
hoped and waited for the end of the War to also become at last the end of hatred and enmity.
The purpose of the Peace Treaty of Versailles, however, did not appear to be that of granting
mankind final peace, but rather to preserve in it undying hatred.

The consequences were unavoidable. When justice ultimately gives way to violence, a
permanent insecurity will disrupt and check the flow of all normal functions in the lives of

146

peoples. When the Treaty was signed, it was completely forgotten that the reconstruction of
the world cannot be guaranteed by the slave labor of a violated nation, but only by the trusting
cooperation of all, and that the foremost prerequisite for this cooperation lies in overcoming
the war psychosis; that furthermore the problematic question of the blame for the War cannot
be cleared up historically if the victor has the vanquished sign a confession of guilt as a
preface to a peace treaty; rather, that the contents of such a dictate most clearly prove who, in
the end, are the guilty parties! The German Volk is deeply convinced that it is in no way to
blame for the War. It may well be that the other parties involved in this tragic misfortune also
harbor the same conviction. If so, it is all the more necessary to everywhere endeavor to
ensure that this general conviction of guiltlessness is not allowed to become a permanent
enmity for all time, and that the memories of this catastrophe of the peoples are not artificially
conserved for this purpose; to endeavor that an unnatural perpetuation of the concepts of
"victor" and "vanquished" does not result in eternally unequal rights which fill one side with
understandable arrogance and the other, however, with bitter wrath.

It is no coincidence that, following such a long period of artificially extended illness,
humanity is certain to show certain effects.

A shocking collapse of economic life was followed by a no less threatening collapse of
politics in general.

But what sense would the World War have had at all if its consequences are manifested
solely in an endless series of economic catastrophes not only for the vanquished, but also for
the victors? The welfare of the peoples has not improved, and their political image and their
human satisfaction have certainly not become any more profound or deep! Armies of
unemployed have developed into a new class in society. And just as the economic structure of
the nations has been shaken, so, too, are their social structures gradually beginning to weaken.

Germany suffered most from these effects of the Peace Treaty and the widespread
insecurity it caused. The number of unemployed increased to a third of those normally
engaged in the working life of the nation. That means, however, that in Germany, counting
family members, approximately twenty million people of a total of sixty-five million were
heading toward a hopeless future without any means of existence. It was only a matter of time
until this army of the economically disinherited would of necessity have become an army of
fanatics politically and socially alienated from the rest of the world.

One of the oldest lands of culture in today's civilization stood, with over six million
Communists, at the brink of disaster, and only a blase lack of comprehension would be
capable of ignoring this fact. Had Red rebellion raced through Germany like a firebrand, the
civilized countries in Western Europe may well have come to the realization that it is not
immaterial whether the outposts of a spiritual, revolutionary, and expansionist Asian world
empire stood watch at the Rhine or on the North Sea or whether peaceful German peasants
and workers, in sincere solidarity with the other peoples of our European culture, wish to earn
their bread by honest work.

In snatching Germany from the brink of this catastrophe, the National Socialist
Movement saved not only the German Volk but also made a historic contribution to the rest of
Europe.

147

And this National Socialist Revolution is pursuing only one aim: restoring order in our
own Volk, providing work and bread for our starving masses, proclaiming the concepts of
honor, loyalty and decency as elements of a moral code of ethics which can bring no harm
upon other peoples, but rather is of benefit to all. Had the National Socialist Movement not
been the representative of a body of ideal concepts, it would not have been able to save our
Volk from the final catastrophe. It has remained true to this body of concepts not only
throughout the period of its struggle for power, but also in the period it has been in power! We
have attacked and combatted every type of depravity, infamy, deception, and corruption
which has accumulated in our Volk since the ill-fated Treaty of Versailles.

This Movement is committed to the task of restoring loyalty, faith and decency to their
rightful position, without respect of person. For eight months we have been waging a heroic
battle against the Communist threat to our Volk, the decomposition of our culture, the
subversion of our art, and the poisoning of our public morality. We have put an end to denial
of God and abuse of religion. We owe Providence humble gratitude for not allowing us to lose
our battle against the misery of unemployment and for the salvation of the German peasant. In
the course of a program, for the implementation of which we calculated four years, of a total
of six million unemployed, more than two and a quarter million have once again been made
part of the useful process of production within scarcely eight months.

The best witness for this tremendous accomplishment is the German Volk itself.

It will prove to the world how strongly it stands behind a regime which knows no aim
other than, with acts of peaceful labor and civilized culture, to make a contribution toward
rebuilding a world which today is spiritually unhappy.

This world, however, which we are not harming and from which we desire only that it
let us labor in peace, has been persecuting us for months with a flood of lies and slander.
Although the Revolution which took place in Germany did not, unlike the French or Russian
Revolutions, butcher hecatombs of humans and murder hostages, and did not, unlike the
uprising of the Paris Commune or the Soviet Revolutions in Bavaria and Hungary, destroy
cultural monuments and works of art-on the contrary, it did not smash a single storefront
window, did not loot a single shop, and did not damage a single building-unscrupulous
agitators are spreading a flood of tales of atrocity which can only be compared with the lies
fabricated by these same elements at the beginning of the War! Tens of thousands of
Americans, English, and French were in Germany during these months and were able to
conclude from what they saw with their own eyes that there is no country in the world with
more law and order than present-day Germany, that in no other country of the world can
person and property be more highly respected than in Germany, but that, perhaps, too, in no
other country of the world is there a fiercer battle being waged against those who, as criminal
elements, believe they are at liberty to give free rein to their lowest instincts to the detriment
of their fellow men. These parties and their Communist accomplices are the ones who are
endeavoring today as emigrants to try to turn honest and decent peoples against one another.

The German Volk has no reason to envy the rest of this world for this gain.

We are convinced that a few years will suffice to make the honor-loving members of the
other peoples thoroughly conscious of the inner value of these unworthy elements who,
effectively hiding behind the flag of political refugees, fled the territories where each had
practiced his own degree of economic unscrupulousless.

148

But what would this world say about Germany if, for the benefit of a character who had
attempted to set the British Parliament on fire, we had an investigative farce staged here, the
sole purpose of which could only be to place British justice and its judges on a level lower
than that of such a scoundrel? As a German and a National Socialist, I would have no interest
in Germany in supporting the cause of a foreigner who attempts to undermine the State or its
laws in England or even puts a torch to the architectural symbol of the English Constitution.
And even if this character were-may God preserve us from the shame-a German, we would
not cover him, but deeply regret that we had had to meet with such misfortune, and would
harbor but one wish: that British justice would unmercifully deliver humanity from such a
pest. 290 However, we possess enough honor to be indignant over a spectacle which, initiated
by obscure elements, is to serve the purpose of shaming and degrading the highest German
court. And we are very saddened at the thought that these methods are used to stir up
animosity and alienate peoples of whom we know that, inwardly, they tower above these
elements. Peoples whom we should hold in high regard and with whom we would like to live
in honest friendship.

These corrupting and inferior characters have succeeded in bringing about a psychosis
in the world, the inner pathological and hysterical duality of which can be demonstrated quite
vividly. For these very elements which, on the one hand, complain of the 'oppression' and
'tyrannization' of the 'poor' German Volk by the National Socialist rulers, declare on the
other with a brazen lack of concern that the protestations of love of peace in Germany are of
no significance because they are uttered merely by a few National Socialist Ministers or the
Reich Chancellor, while an uncontrolled war-fever is rampant among the Volk.

That is the way they do things: the German Volk is presented to the world as either
regrettably unhappy and oppressed or as brutal and aggressive, whatever the occasion
requires.

I perceive it as a sign of a nobler sense of justice that, in his most recent speech, the
French Premier Daladier found words of conciliatory understanding for which countless
millions of Germans are inwardly grateful to him. National Socialist Germany has no other
wish but to steer the competition of the European peoples back to those areas in which they
bestowed upon the entire human race in the most noble and mutual rivalry those tremendous
assets of civilization, culture, and art which enrich and beautify the appearance of the world
today.

Similarly, we have been moved to hope by the promise that the French Government
under its present head does not intend to offend or humiliate the German Volk. We are
overcome by the mention of an all too sad truth, namely that both of these great peoples have
so often in history sacrificed the blood of their best youths and men on the battlefield. I am
speaking on behalf of the entire German Volk when I affirm that we are all filled by the
honest desire to eradicate an enmity which means sacrifices that are in no proportion to any
possible gains.

The German Volk is convinced that its military honor has remained pure and
unblemished in thousands of battles and skirmishes, just as we view the French soldier only as
our old and yet glorious opponent. We and the entire German Volk would all be happy at the
thought of sparing our children and our children's children what we had to witness and endure
ourselves as honorable men in long and bitter years of pain and suffering. The history of the

149

last 150 years should, in the course of all its vicissitudes, have taught both peoples one thing:
namely that essential changes are no longer possible, regardless of the blood sacrificed to
bring them about. As a National Socialist, I, and with me, all my followers, refuse on the basis
of our national principles to conquer the people of a foreign nation-who would not love us in
any case-at the price of the blood and lives of those who are dear and precious to us.

It would be a tremendous event for the entire human race were the two peoples willing
to ban force from their common life once and for all.

The German Volk is willing to do this. In that we openly lay claim to the rights
accorded us by the treaties themselves, I also want to declare just as openly that, in
Germany's view, there are no further territorial conflicts between the two countries. Once the
Saar has returned to the Reich, only a lunatic could conceive of the possibility of a war
between the two States, a war for which, seen from our perspective, there would no longer be
any morally or reasonably justifiable grounds. For no one would have a right to expect that
millions of young lives be destroyed for the sake of making a problematic correction-both in
terms of extent and value-of the present borders ! The French Premier asks why German youth
are marching and falling into line; the answer is, not in order to demonstrate against France,
but in order to show and document that very political formation of will which was necessary
to overcome Communism and will be necessary to keep Communism at bay. In Germany
there is only one bearer of arms, and that is the Army. And conversely, there is only one
enemy for the National Socialist Organization, and that is Communism.

The world will have to come to terms with the fact that, to protect itself from this threat,
the German Volk chooses the forms for its internal organization which alone guarantee
success. While the rest of the world entrenches itself in indestructible fortresses, puts together
huge aircraft squadrons, constructs giant tanks, and molds enormous guns, it cannot talk about
a threat because German National Socialists, totally unarmed, are parading in columns of four
and by doing so are constituting an outward manifestation of the German Volksgemeinschaft
and its effective protection! If the French Premier Daladier raises the further question of why
Germany is demanding weapons which will be eliminated sooner or later in any case, he is in
error.

The German Volk and the German Government have not demanded any weapons at all;
they have demanded equality of rights.

If the world resolves that all weapons are to be destroyed down to the very last machine
gun, then we are willing to join such a convention immediately. If the world resolves to
destroy certain weapons, we are willing to renounce them from the very beginning. But if the
world grants to every nation the right to possess certain weapons, then we are not willing to
allow ourselves to be excluded on principle as an inferior nation. If we honorably uphold our
respective conviction, we are more decent partners to the other nations than if we were
willing, contrary to our conviction, to accept humiliating and degrading conditions. For we
are pledging an entire Volk with our signature, while the dishonorable and characterless
negotiator will be rejected by his own people.

If we are to enter into treaties with the English, the French or the Polish, we desire from
the start to conclude them only with men who think and act on behalf of their nations one
hundred percent as English, French or Polish. We want to conclude treaties with nations, not
sign pacts with negotiators. And if today we turn against an unscrupulous propaganda

150

campaign, we are doing so only because not the agitators, but unfortunately the peoples will
have to atone for the sins of this worldwide poisoning (Weltvergiftung) with their blood.

The former German governments confidently entered the League of Nations in the
hopes of finding in it a forum for a just balance of the interests of the nations and a sincere
reconciliation, particularly with former opponents.

However, the prerequisite was that equal rights finally be restored to the German Volk.

The same prerequisite applied to Germany's participation in the Disarmament
Conference. The degradation of a member of such an institution or conference to one which
does not enjoy equality of rights is an unbearable humiliation for an honor-loving nation of 65
million people and a no less honorloving government! The German Volk has more than
fulfilled its obligations to disarm. It is now time for the armed states to do no less in fulfilling
their respective obligations.

The German Government is not taking part in this conference in order to negotiate
additional cannons or machine guns for the German Volk, but to contribute, as a party with
equal rights, to the general pacification of the world.

Germany has just as much right to security as the other nations. When the English
Minister Baldwin regards it as a matter of course that England's talk of disarmament can only
be conceived as the disarmament of more highly armed States parallel to its own arms buildup
to a certain common level, it would be unfair to heap accusations upon Germany if, being a
conference member with equality of rights, it ultimately holds the same view in respect to
itself. This demand on the part of Germany cannot in any way constitute a threat to the other
powers. For the defense systems of the other nations are built to withstand the strongest
offensive weapons, while Germany demands not offensive weapons, but merely those
defensive weapons which will not be prohibited in future but rather granted to all nations.
And here as well, Germany is willing from the very beginning to be satisfied with a numerical
minimum which is in no proportion to the gigantic offensive and defensive weapons of our
former opponents.

The deliberate degradation of our Volk, however, which consists of the fact that every
people of the world is granted a self-evident right denied to us alone, is something we
experience as the perpetuation of a discrimination which is, for us, unbearable.

I already stated in my Peace Speech in May that, to our greatest regret, we would no
longer be in a position to remain a member of the League of Nations or to take part in
international conferences under such conditions.

The men leading Germany today have nothing in common with the salaried traitors of
November 1918. We all once did our duty to our Vaterland and risked our lives just as any
decent Englishman and any decent Frenchman did. We are not responsible for the War and
not responsible for what happened during it, but conscious only of a responsibility for what
any man of honor would have been forced to do for his people in this crisis and what we did,
in fact, do.

We are devoted to our Volk with a boundless love, and it is out of this same love, from
the bottom of our hearts, that we desire to reach an understanding with the other peoples and
shall, if this is at all possible, also attempt to do so.

151

However, as representatives of an honest nation with an individuality of its own, it is
impossible for us to belong to institutions under conditions which can only be borne by the
dishonest. As far as we are concerned, it may be that there once were men who believed
themselves capable of being part of such international pacts in spite of this burden.

It is futile to discuss whether they were the best of our Volk, but one thing is certain:
that namely the best of our Volk were not standing behind them. But the world can have only
one interest: to negotiate with honorable men and not with a nation's criminals, and to enter
into treaties with the former and not with the latter; however, it then must, for its part, do
justice to the honor and sentiment of such a regime, just as we are grateful for being able to
deal with men of honor.

This is all the more necessary because only in such an atmosphere can measures be
found which lead to a genuine pacification of the peoples. For the spirit of such a conference
must be one of honest cooperation; otherwise the outcome of all these attempts is doomed to
be failure from the very onset.

Having concluded from the declarations of the official representatives of a number of
major States that they presently do not contemplate true equality of rights for Germany, it is
presently also not possible for this Germany to continue to impose itself upon other nations
from a position of such unworthiness.

The threats of force, if translated into reality, could constitute nothing but violations of
law. The conviction is deeply rooted in the German Government that its appeal to the entire
German nation will prove to the world that the Government's love of peace and its concept of
honor constitute the entire Volk's yearning for peace and concept of honor.

In order to document this claim, I have decided to request the Reich President to
dissolve the German Reichstag and, in new elections coupled with a plebiscite, to give the
German Volk the opportunity to make a historic vow, not limited to an approval of the
principles of the Government, but documenting unreserved unanimity with them as well. May
this vow serve to convince the world that the German Volk allies itself completely with its
government in this struggle for equality of rights and honor, and that both are filled in their
innermost depths by no other desire than to help end a human epoch of tragic aberrations,
regrettable discord and fighting between those who, as inhabitants of the culturally most
significant continent, also have a common mission to fulfill in the future for the whole of
mankind.

May this tremendous rally of our Volk for peace and honor succeed in providing that
prerequisite in the internal relationships between the European States which is necessary to
end not only centuries of discord and strife, but also to build anew a better community: the
recognition of a higher, common duty arising from common equal rights!

152

Adolf Hitler - speeches honouring the 10~ u anniversary
of the March to Feldherrnhalle

(8-9.11.1923)

Adolf Hitler - speech in the Burgerbraukeller

November 8, 1933

My Comrades, my German Volksgenossen!

^fVIYhen, ten years ago today, the attempt was made in Germany for the second
Trl|j[time321 to overcome the State of shame, the State of German misery, this
C^ attempt was not made without reflection. When grown men are willing to commit
and, if necessary, sacrifice their lives of their own free will for a certain goal, this is not a
thoughtless gesture. It was done under the duress of the most bitter German crisis, in the hope
of possibly being able to nevertheless avert this crisis. We know that this uprising of our Volk
failed back then. A few hours later, the preconditions upon which it had based its hopes were
no longer given.

For I can repeat today exactly what I said then at the trial.

Never did we conceive of carrying out an uprising against the Wehrmacht of our Volk.
With it, we believed, it would have been possible. Some describe the collapse which then took
place as a tragedy of fate; today we would like to call it Providence and the wisdom of
Providence. Today, ten years later, we know that we took up our task with pure hearts,
incredible determination, and with personal courage, too. But today we also know-better than
we did then- that the time was not yet ripe.

And nonetheless I am convinced that all of those who did what they did at that time
were made, by the dictates of a force majeure, to act as they did.

Back then we opened the ears of the nation to the young Movement on this evening and
the following day; we opened the eyes of the entire German Volk, and we equipped the
Movement with the heroism it later needed. And above all: This evening and this day, they
made it possible for us to fight legally afterwards for ten years. Do not be mistaken: had we
not acted then, I never would have been able to found, form and maintain a revolutionary
movement and stay legal doing it.

They said to me, and they were right: you are talking like the rest and you will do as
little as the rest have done. But this day, this decision, made me able to see it through for nine
years in spite of all the opposition.

I do not know how many hundreds of times I have stood here, but one thing I do know
is that, these hundreds of times, I have never retracted what I have said, but always continued
on a strict course. I have done so for fourteen years, and now that Fate has finally made me
Chancellor, I should suddenly turn back? No!

153

Adolf Hitler - speech at the Odeonsplatz in Munich

November 8, 1933
Men of the German Revolution! My Old Guard!

ien we first took up the political fight in 1919, we did it as soldiers. All of us had
[before honorably done our duty for Germany. Only when the homeland broke
down and the political leadership pitifully surrendered what millions had paid for
with their blood did we resolve to take up the fight in the homeland itself, based upon the
conviction that the sacrifices of the soldier must be in vain if the political leadership becomes
weak.

Because the Revolution of November 1918 violated the laws then in force, it could not
expect us to acknowledge it as a legal and binding condition. At that time we men and
political soldiers declared war on it, determined to overthrow those responsible for that
November and, sooner or later and in one way or another, to call them to account for their
actions.

Hence we marched in November 1923, filled by the faith that it could be possible to
erase the shame of November 1918, to exterminate the men who were to blame for the
unutterable misfortune of our Volk. Fate decided differently back then. Today, ten years later,
we can make a dispassionate assessment of that period. We know that, at the time, we were
acting according to the commands of Fate and that we were all probably tools of a force
majeure.

It was not to be: the time was not yet ripe. What caused us the most pain back then was
the rift which separated the powers which once had us, too, in their ranks, and the powers
which the nation needed in order to become free once more.

At that time the rift hurt, and we had only one hope: that time would heal this inner
wound again, that the brothers who were hostile to each other at the time but, in the end,
really wanted only to fight for one Germany, might grow once more to form the community
we had experienced for four and a half years.

Ten years have passed, and today it makes me happiest of all that yesterday's hope has
now become reality, that we are now standing together: the representatives of our Army and
the deputies of our Volk; that we have again become one and that this unity will never again
break apart in Germany. Only that has given the blood sacrifice a meaning, so that it was not
in vain. For what we were marching for then is what has now become reality.

Were the dead of November 9 to rise again today, they would shed tears of joy that the
German Army and the awakening German Volk have now joined to form a single unit. For
this reason it is right to keep our memories of that time alive, and right to unveil this day a
memorial to that time. Those of us whom Fate allowed to survive wish to couple our thanks to
the comrades of that time with our thanks to the comrades of the four years preceding it, that
we ourselves may now fulfill the yearning and the hope of that time by doing our own duty!
Fate has shown to us the path from which we will never stray. In this hour when we once
again assemble for our Volk, we want to renew our faith in this German Volk, in its honor, in

154

its equal rights, but also to renew its will for peace and its love of peace. It is painful to lose
the best of a Volk; over and over again, the best have always been the ones who have had to
meet the enemy in battle.

And thus today we also wish to affirm, from our innermost conviction, our belief in the
concept of peace; we want to be cognizant of how difficult the sacrifices are which the fight
requires, but moreover we again want to couple this love of peace with our resolve to
courageously defend at all times the honor of the nation, the freedom of the nation, and its
equality of rights.

When unveiling this memorial, I wish to once more thank all those who have faithfully
fought for the German resurrection throughout all these long years, each in his place; I wish to
thank the tens and hundreds of thousands of comrades in the Movement, to thank the men of
the other associations who, marching along other routes, came to join us in the end, and I also
wish to thank those who led the Wehrmacht into the new State.

In uniting the entire power of the nation today, we are finally giving the dead eternal
peace: for that is what they were fighting for, and that is what they died for! And with this in
mind we shall now unveil the memorial.

At 9.00 p.m. on the evening of November 9, 1933, the Fuhrer conducted this ceremony
for the first time. Approximately 1,000 members of the Leibstandarte, 100 men from the
Stabswache Goring and fifty members of the Stabswache Rohm had assembled on the square,
complete with steel helmets and rifles. The ceremonies began with a chorale sung by the elite
soldiers in attendance. A band played. Then came the Fuhrer :

I demand of you that you lay down your lives just as the sixteen men who were
killed at this very spot. Your lives must have no other purpose but loyalty.

These dead are your examples, and you shall be the unattainable [!] examples to
the others.

155

Adolf Hitler - New Year's Proclamation to the National Socialists

and Party Comrades

January 1, 1934

/ Ji nd so the goal of our fight for the German nation in an external sense as well is
J£A none other than that of restoring to our Volk honor and equality of rights and of
\T making a sincere contribution to avoiding future bloodshed, which we former

soldiers of the World War can envision only as a new catastrophe of the nations in a Europe

which has gone mad.

Thus we leave behind us the Year of the German Revolution and enter into the Year of
the German Restoration as National Socialists with the mutual pledge to be a sworn
community, filled by the single ardent desire to be allowed to serve our German Volk for the
benefit of its peace and good fortune.

156

Adolf Hitler - interview for the writer Hanns Johst on the concept of
the 'Burger ' (bourgeoisie) published in the "Frankfurter Volksblatt "

January 27, 1934

uestion: The Burger ' is feeling increasingly distressed in respect to the romantic
idea of peace of mind, his own peace of mind. So would you, Herr Reichskanzler,
allow me to ask quite openly: what is your position on the 'Burger'?

Answer: I believe it would be a good thing if we first detach the concept of the 'Burger'
from the extremely unclear ambiguity which surrounds it and mutually establish an
unambiguous definition of what we understand by the term ' Burger. ' I need only cite the
'Staatsbiirger' (citizen) and the 'Spiefiburger' (Philistine) to name two members of this
species.

Question: Do you mean to say the 'Staatsbiirger' is the man who stands up for his State
politically no matter what, and the Spiefibfirger' is the type who calls himself apolitical for
fear of losing his peaceful existence and, acting the Philistine, uses the well-known practice of
sticking his head in the sand to avoid being an eyewitness to political conditions ?

Answer: That's exactly what I mean. One section of the bourgeois world and the
bourgeois Weltanschauung enjoys acting the part of being completely disinterested in political
life. These people have not progressed beyond the prewar position that politics has its own
forms of existence far removed from their normal life in society and is to be practiced by a
special caste engaged and predestined for that purpose. These people, armchair politicians,
enjoy criticizing you as part of a general mood or motivated by personal interest, but they will
never take on any representative, public responsibility. My Movement, as an expression of
will and yearning, encompasses every aspect of the entire Volk. It conceives of Germany as a
corporate body, as a single organism. There is no such thing as nonresponsibility in this
organic being, not a single cell which is not responsible, by its very existence, for the welfare
and well-being of the whole.

Thus in my view there is not the least amount of room for apolitical people. Every
German, whether he wants to be or not, is by virtue of his being born into German destiny, by
the fact of his existence, a representative of the form of existence of this very Germany. In
upholding this principle, I am turning every class conflict around and at the same time
declaring war on every concept of caste and consciousness of class.

Question: That means that you will not tolerate any flight into private life, whereas the
bourgeois likes to take refuge in being a private person ? You are forcing everyone to take on
the position of a 'Staatsbiirger?'

Answer: I reject shilly-shallying (Driickebergerei) about decisions! Every single
German must know what he wants! And he must take a stand for what he wants!

Since 1914, 1 have devoted my life to fighting. First as a soldier, blindly obedient to the
military leadership. When this leadership allowed itself to be locked out of the power sphere
of command in 1918, I took a close look at the new political command and recognized in it

157

the true face of Marxism. With that began my fight against the politics of this theory and its
practice.

Question: You encountered Marxist parties and the indifference of the middle class.
You were regarded as part of the bourgeois right-wing.

Answer: This evaluation of my life's work leaves room for two errors. My entire
energy was devoted from the beginning to overcoming the leadership of the state by parties,
and secondly-although this is logical and obvious from the origins of my uprising-I must
never be understood in bourgeois terms.

In the quarrel of the parties, it became evident that the discussion was being conducted
under false appearances. It is wrong, you see, that the bourgeois parties have become the
employers and for the Marxists to call themselves proles and employees. There are just as
many proles among the employers as there are bourgeois elements among the employees.

The bourgeois -allegedly for the sake of the Vaterland-are defending property, a
capitalistic value. Thus from a Marxist point of view, love of one's country is not dumb, but
rather capital's greed for profit. On the other hand, the international character of Marxism is
regarded by the middle class as speculation for a world economy in which there is only state
administration and no longer any private property.

The member of the bourgeoisie avoids this division of the Volk into opposing interest
groups by hiding behind the superficial and zealous optimism of his daily paper and allowing
himself to be educated "apolitically." The lessons are organized very nicely according to the
taste of his majesty, Gullible Fritz (Majestat Zipfelmutze), placid and peaceful. People are
reverting step by step. The compromise serves over and over again to ban controversy literally
from the face-but only the face-of the planet, and the end, the end is a political matter
somewhere in the distance which is better left alone to preserve the peace, of course. But the
fact that this peace was not a peace at all, but a daily defeat, a daily victory of consciously
political Marxism-it is for the recognition of this fact that National Socialism is fighting.

National Socialism takes for itself the pure idea from each of these two camps. From the
camp of bourgeois tradition, it takes national resolve, and from the materialism of the Marxist
dogma living, creative Socialism.

Volksgemeinschaft: that means a community of all productive labor, that means the
oneness of all vital interests, that means overcoming bourgeois privatism and the unionized,
mechanically organized masses, that means unconditionally equating the individual fate and
the nation, the individual and the Volk.

I know that liberal bourgeois concepts are highly developed in Germany, the bourgeois
man rejects public life and has a deep-seated aversion toward what goes on in the streets. If he
weakens in his resolve for any length of time, this public life, the street, will destroy the ideal
of his four walls.

In cases like this, attack is the best form of defense.

I am not responsible for the fact that the central command of the German State was
taken over by the street in 1918. However, the bourgeoisie does not have the slightest reason
to suspect that I was the drummer who sounds the reveille, for if the bourgeoisie had slept

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through the facts of history, it would have awakened too late, awakened to a political state of
affairs which is called Bolshevism and which is the mortal enemy of the concepts of the
middle class. The Russian Revolution was up in arms against the middle class as bourgeoisie,
and in Germany the decisive battle of this Weltanschauung has just been lost.

The fact that all of Germany is enlightened as to Bolshevist imperialism, that not a
single German can say, "I knew nothing of it," but can resort only to the lame excuse, "I
didn't believe it"-that is and always has been my commitment and the basic principle of all of
my loyal followers.

Question: Inasmuch as you were forced by the Weimar Constitution to organize along
party lines, you called your movement the National Socialist Workers ' Party. In my opinion,
you are thus giving the concept of the worker priority over the concept of the bourgeoisie.

Answer: I chose the word "worker" because it was more natural and corresponded with
every element of my being, and because I wanted to recapture this word for the national force.
I did not and will not allow the concept of the worker to simply take on an international
connotation and become an object of distrust to the bourgeoisie. In a certain sense, I had to
"naturalize" the term worker and subject it once again to the control of the German language
and the sovereign rights and obligations of the German Volk. Similarly, I will not tolerate that
the correctly used and essentially understood concept of the 'Burger' is spoiled. But I believe
the 'Burger' is called upon to ensure this.

Question: In the Weltanschauung of National Socialism, there are therefore only the
'Staatsburger ' and the worker. And all people are either both, or neither, and thus parasites
in the life of the State.

Answer: Certainly, I feel this is a significant comparison, for this alone enables us to
dispense with the entire superficial vocabulary of unnecessary arrogance caused by
parliamentarianism and all of that liberalism. The 'Spiefiburger' must become a citizen of the
State; the Red comrade must become a Volksgenosse. Both must, with their good intentions,
ennoble the sociological concept of the worker and raise the status of an honorary title for
labor. This patent of nobility alone puts the soldier and the peasant, the merchant and the
academician, the worker and the capitalist under oath to take the only possible direction in
which all purposeful German striving must be headed: towards the nation.

Only when everything that happens within the entire German community happens with
a view to the whole does the whole, in the changing currents of political effects, in turn
become capable of taking on the positive and productive leadership of all of the individual
units, classes and conditions.

Leadership is always based upon the free will and good intentions of those being led.
My doctrine of the Fiihrer concept is therefore quite the opposite of what the Bolshevists like
to present it as being: the doctrine of a brutal dictator who triumphs over the destruction of the
values of private life. Thus as Reich Chancellor I am not discontinuing my activities as a
public educator; on the contrary: I am using every means provided by the State and its power
to publish and make known my every word and deed with the goal of winning the public with
this openness for every single decision of my national will by proof and conviction. And I am
doing this because I believe in the creative power and the creative contribution of the Volk.

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Question: In other words, Herr Reichskanzler, in the Volk you perceive the myth of a
fusion of the worker and the 'Burger, ' just as you perceive the State as the malleable
instrument of the Volk? If I may state it quite openly, you see the instrument of the State in the
hand of the Volk, and you thus see in your own chancellorship the sovereignty of the Volk as
consecrated to the name of Adolf Hitler!

Answer: I hope that this dialogue serves as an enlightenment to the broad circles of the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeois man should stop feeling like some sort of pensioner of tradition or
capital and separated from the worker by the Marxist concept of property; rather, he should
strive, with an open mind, to become integrated in the whole as a worker, for he is not a
member of society at all in the distorted sense in which he was persecuted as a hostile brother
within the ranks of the Volk. He should base his classic bourgeois pride upon his citizenship
and, in other respects, be modestly conscious of his identity as a worker.

For everything, which does not feverishly press for work and affirm its faith in work is
condemned to extinction in the sphere of National Socialism.

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Adolf Hitler - Speech to the Reichstag

Berlin, January 30, 1934

Deputies! Men of the German Reichstag!

/^^'oday in retrospect we call the year 1933 [sic!] the Year of the National Socialist

I Revolution, and one day an objective assessment of its incidents and events will

^^Kjudge it right to put this name down in the history of our Volk. What will be

regarded as decisive is not the moderate form in which this revolutionary change took place

externally, but the inner greatness of the transformation this year has brought to the German

Volk in every sector and in all facets of its life.

In the space of barely twelve months, one world of ideas and institutions was eliminated
and another put in its place. What happened in this short space of time before our very eyes
was still regarded and described as a fantastic Utopia on the very eve of the memorable day of
January 30, 1933 by the certainly overwhelming majority of our Volk and in particular by the
supporters, spokesmen and representatives of former conditions.

However, such a miraculous historic event would truly be inconceivable had the
command which brought it about been due only to the whim of some capricious human spirit
or even a quirk of fate. No. The prerequisites for this event have necessarily evolved and
resulted from the developments of many long years. A horrible crisis cried out for a remedy.
So that the hour was waiting only for a will ready to fulfill the historic undertaking.

The State has dealt no less radically with the two Christian confessions.

Filled by the desire to secure for the German Volk the great religious, moral and ethical
values anchored in the two Christian confessions, we have eliminated the political
organizations while, at the same time, reinforcing the religious institutions. For an agreement
with the powerful National Socialist State is more valuable to a Church than the conflict
between denominational political associations which, in view of the policy of compromise
necessitated by their coalition, are forced to spiritually abandon a truly inward, religious
education and stabilization of the Volk in order to pay for personal advantages to party
members.

However, we all harbor the expectation that the merger of the Protestant Land Churches
and confessions to form a German Protestant Reich Church might truly satisfy the yearning of
those who believe that, in the muddled dividedness of Protestant life, they must fear a
weakening in the power of the Protestant faith.

This year the National Socialist State has clearly demonstrated its high regard for the
strength of the Christian faiths, and hence it expects the same high regard on the part of the
confessions for the strength of the National Socialist State! [-] Thus at this time I would like
to protest against the theory which has been advanced again recently that Germany could only
be happy under the rule of its traditional princes.

No! We are one Volk, and we want to live in one Reich.

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And those who sinned against this principle so often in the past in German history were
not able to credit their mission to God's merciful will but instead, as history has taught us,
unfortunately all too often to the expedient favor and support of their worst enemies.

In this year, we have thus consciously enforced the authority of the Reich and the
authority of the Government against those infirm descendents and heirs to the politics of the
past who believed themselves capable of declaring their traditional resistance to the National
Socialist State.

It was one of the happiest hours of my life when it became clear that the entire German
Volk was granting its approval to a policy which exclusively represented its interests.

With all due respect to the values of the monarchy and in all esteem to the truly great
emperors and kings of our German history, the question of permanently shaping the structure
of the State of the German Reich is completely beyond discussion today. No matter how the
nation and its leaders may one day decide, there is one thing they should never forget: he who
personifies Germany's highest peak receives his calling from the German Volk and is
obligated to it alone! For my part, I regard myself merely as an agent of the nation engaged to
implement those reforms which will one day enable it to make the final decision on the
permanent constitution of the Reich.

...It was all the more difficult to apply the principles of the National Socialist
movement to the economic sector because herethree urgent tasks had to be tackled
immediately:

1. It was necessary to introduce measures affecting trade and pricing policy in order to
save the farmers who were facing utter disaster, and then to pass legislation in order to restore
strong and permanent support for the farmers.

2. The ever-increasing general corruption forced us to take action to cleanse our
economic life of ruthless speculators and profiteers.

3. The need to put six and a half million unemployed back to work meant that we
simply could not rely on theories whose superficial appeal would all too easily have
concealed the fact that today they are irrelevant and thus pointless. For when the National
Socialist Revolution took over the government, one person was unemployed for every two
persons who were employed. If, as was not merely to be feared but expected, the number of
unemployed had increased, this ratio would soon have been reversed, thus creating a hopeless
situation.

You cannot feed six and a half million unemployed by the Marxist practice of reciting
fine theories; the only way is to create real jobs. And so in this first year we have already
made our first general assault on unemployment. In a quarter of the time I asked for before the
March elections, useful work has been found for a third of the unemployed. We attacked this
problem from all directions and this is what ensured our success.

As we look back on the year which has just ended, we are ready to launch a renewed
attack on this problem armed with the experience we have gained from the past year. The
combination of government incentives and private initiative and energy was, however,

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possible only because our People have renewed confidence in their leadership and in the
stability of a certain economic and legal system.

Some of our opponents feel obliged to detract from the glory of our achievements by
pointing out that after all the entire People have helped to achieve these goals. They are
absolutely right! And we are full of pride that we have really succeeded in rallying the entire
nation to help in its renewal. For this is the only way that we were able to solve the problems
which defeated many earlier governments, because without this confidence they were bound
to fail. And ultimately this was the only reason why this gigantic practical and partly
improvised task could be so closely linked with our ideological principles.

The simple statement that the People are not there for the sake of the economy nor the
economy for the sake of capital, but capital must serve the economy and the economy must
serve the People, was already the Government's guiding principle in all the measures which it
took in the course of the past year.

This was the primary reason why the major practical measures initiated by the
Government could be continued in an atmosphere of understanding and enthusiasm. By
introducing tax reductions and by the wise application of government subsidies, we also
succeeded in stimulating the production of raw materials to an extent which even twelve
months ago most of our critics had considered completely inconceivable.

Some of the measures which were introduced to achieve this goal will not be fully
appreciated until the future. This applies particularly to our promotion of the motorization of
the German transport system together with the construction of the national freeway system
(Reichs- Autobahnen). A solution was found for the old rivalry between the national railway
system (Reichsbahn) and the automobile which will one day be of great benefit to the entire
German People.

We realized that in order to kick- start the economy in this first year we would have to
begin by providing basic types of employment, so that the resulting increase in purchasing
power of the broad mass of the population would then gradually stimulate the production of
more sophisticated goods.

In the process of achieving all this we attempted by a combination of generous
assistance and rigorous economies to restore order to the completely bankrupt finances of the
Reich, the individual states and the local authorities.

The extent of the economic recovery can be most clearly seen from the enormous
reduction in the numbers of unemployed and the no less significant increase in the entire
national income for which we now have statistical evidence. Because our first priority had to
be the resumption of national production and reduction of the number of unemployed, we
reluctantly decided to forgo some otherwise desirable measures.

The fact that our activities during this past year were nonetheless put under fire from
countless foes is only natural. We have borne this burden in the past and will also be able to
bear it in the future. Degenerated emigrants, who for the most part quitted the scene of their
former operations not for political, but for purely criminal reasons because the changed
atmosphere had given them cause for alarm, are now attempting to mobilize a gullible world
against Germany with truly villainous dexterity and a criminal lack of conscience, but their

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lies will catch up with them all the faster now that tens of thousands of respectable and
honorable men and women are coming to Germany from other countries and can compare
with their own eyes the accounts delivered by these internationally "persecuted" parties with
the actual reality.

Furthermore, the fact that a number of Communist ideologists believe it necessary to
turn back the tide of history and, in doing so, make use of a subhumanity
(Untermenschentum) which mistakes the concept of political freedom for the idea of allowing
criminal instincts free rein will similarly cause us little concern. We were able to deal with
these elements when they were in power and we were in the opposition. In the future we will
be even more certain of being able to deal with them because they are now in the opposition
and we are in power.

A number of our bourgeois intellectuals as well are of the conviction that they cannot
accept the hard facts. However, it is much more useful to have this rootless intellectuality as
an enemy than as a follower. For these persons turn away from all that is healthy, and all that
is diseased awakens their interest and is given their support.

I would also like to add to the ranks of the enemies of the new regime the small clique
of those whose gaze is incorrigibly directed backward, in whose eyes the peoples are nothing
other than abandoned trading posts who are only waiting for a master so as to find, under his
divine guidance, the only possible inner satisfaction. And last of all, I add that little group of
volkisch ideologists who believe that it is only possible to make the nation happy by
eradicating the experiences and consequences of two thousand years of history to start out on
new trails, clad, so to speak, in their "bearskins." All of these opponents taken together, in
numerical terms, scarcely amount to 2.5 million people, in contrast to the more than forty
million who profess their faith in the new State and its regime. These two million are not to be
rated as opposition, for they comprise a chaotic conglomeration of the most diverse opinions
and views, utterly incapable of pursuing any type of common goal, and capable only of
joining in rejecting today's State.

More dangerous than these, however, are the two categories of people whom we must
perceive as a genuine burden to our present-day Reich and the Reich of tomorrow.

First of all, there are the political birds of passage who alight wherever the crops are
being harvested in summer. Spineless, weak characters-yet true opportunists who pounce on
every successful movement, and endeavor by overloud clamor and more than perfect behavior
to avoid or answer from the very start the question of their past origins and activities.

They are dangerous because they attempt to satisfy their purely personal and egotistical
interests behind the mask of the new regime and, in doing so, become a genuine burden to a
Movement for which millions of decent people spent years making the most difficult
sacrifices without ever even having conceived of the idea that they could ever be repaid for
the suffering and deprivation which they had taken upon themselves for their Volk.

Purging the State and the Party of these importunate parasites will be an important task,
particularly for the future. Then many inwardly decent people, who were unable to come to
the Movement earlier, often for understandable and even cogent reasons, will also find their
way to it without having to fear being mistaken for such dubious elements.

164

And another heavy burden is the army of those who were born into the negative side of
the volkisch life due to their hereditary predisposition.

Here the State will be able to take genuinely revolutionary measures. The National
Socialist Movement deserves great credit for having launched, by way of legislation as early
as last year, an initial offensive against this threat of the gradual disintegration of the Volk.26
When objections are raised-particularly from the denominational quarter-and opposition is
offered to this legislation, I am forced to reply by saying that it would have been more
effective, more decent and above all more Christian not to have stood by those who
deliberately destroyed healthy life instead of rebelling against those who have no other goal
but to avoid disease from the very onset.

Apart from that, whatever is allowed to happen in this sphere not only constitutes an act
of cruelty against the innocent victims themselves, but is also an act of cruelty against the
Volk as a whole. If the development were allowed to progress at the rate of the last hundred
years, the number of those dependent upon public welfare would one day threaten to approach
the number of those who ultimately would be the only support for the preservation of the
community.

It is not the Churches who must feed these armies of the unfortunate, but the Volk.
Were the Churches to state their willingness to take those suffering from hereditary illnesses
into their care and keeping, we would gladly be willing to dispense with their sterilization.
But as long as the State is condemned to raise gigantic, annually increasing sums-today
already exceeding the mark of 350 million-from its citizens toward maintaining these
regrettable hereditarily ill people in the nation, then it is forced to resort to that remedy which
both prevents that such undeserved suffering be passed on in the future and also prohibits that
millions of healthy persons are often deprived of the bare necessities of life in order to
artificially preserve the lives of millions of ill people.

Men of the German Reichstag! No matter how great the results of the Year of the
National Socialist Revolution and leadership of State were, one fact is even more significant:
namely, that this great transition could take place in our Volk first of all with what was
absolutely lightning speed, and secondly almost totally without bloodshed.

It is the fate of the overwhelming majority of all revolutions to completely lose their
footing in rushing to storm ahead, only to be dashed to pieces after all somewhere in the end
when meeting up with the hard facts. However, our leadership of the national uprising has
been, for the most part, so exemplary as to bar comparison with practically every other in
history with the exception of the Fascist Revolution in Italy.

The reasons for this lie in the fact that it was not a Volk driven to despair and otherwise
disorganized which raised the flag of revolt and laid the torches to the existing State, but a
brilliantly organized movement with followers who had become disciplined in long years
which waged the battle. The National Socialist Party and its organizations deserve undying
credit for this; the brown Guard is to thank for it. It prepared the German uprising, carried it
through and completed it almost without bloodshed and with an incomparable
methodicalness.

165

This miracle, however, was also inconceivable without the voluntary and absolute
consent of those who aspired to identical goals as leaders of similar organizations or who, as
officers, represented the German Wehrmacht.

It is a unique historic example of how such a sincere attachment could form between the
powers of the Revolution and the responsible leaders of an utterly disciplined Wehrmacht in
the service of the Volk which is comparable to that between the National Socialist Party and
myself as its leader on the one hand and the officers and soldiers of the German Army and
Navy on the other.

Whereas the Stahlhelm increasingly came to join National Socialism in these twelve
months to finally most fairly express this fraternity in a fusion with it, the Army and its
leadership has, in this same space of time, stood by the new State in unconditional loyalty and
allegiance and actually first made the success of our work possible before history.

For it was not a civil war which could save Germany, but only the unanimous uniting of
all those who, even in the worst years, had not lost their faith in the German Volk and the
German Reich.

At the closing of this year of the greatest domestic revolution and as a special sign of
the enormous, unifying power of our ideal, I may note that in a cabinet which contained only
three National Socialists in January 1933, today all of the ministers are still doing active duty
with the exception of one man who left of his own volition and who, to my great pleasure,
was elected on our list, a real German patriot, in this auditorium.27 Thus the men of the
government formed on January 30, 1933 have also accomplished in their own ranks what they
demanded from the entire German Volk: disregarding earlier differences to work together for
the resurrection of our Volk and the honor and freedom of our Reich. The struggle for the
inner reorganization of the German Volk and Reich, which was best expressed in the fusion of
Party and State and of Volk and Reich, has not yet been completed.

True to our proclamation when our Government took office one year ago, we will
continue the struggle. Thus the tasks of our domestic intentions and actions are already lined
out for the future: strengthening the Reich by uniting all powers in an organizational form
which finally accomplishes what has been neglected for half a millennium as a result of
selfishness and incompetence.

Promotion of the welfare of our Volk in all spheres of life and civilized culture.

The German Reichstag will be called upon within the next few hours to pass a new law
to give the Government further legal authorization to continue the National Socialist
Revolution.

In principle, the German Government is proceeding on the assumption that, in respect to
the character of our relations with other countries, it is naturally of no consequence which
type of constitution and form of government the peoples choose to adopt for themselves. It is
each and every Volk's very own private matter to determine its domestic life at its own
discretion. However, it is thus also the absolutely private matter of the German Volk to
choose the spiritual contents and the constructive form of its organizations and leadership of
State according to its own wishes.

166

For many months we have been painfully forced to observe that the difference which is
evident between our world view and that of other nations has been used as an excuse not only
to heap numerous unjustified accusations upon the German Volk and the German Reich, but
also to view it with a completely unfounded distrust.

We have not adopted these views. In the past twelve months, we have made a sincere
endeavor to cultivate the relations of the German Reich to all other States in the spirit of
reconciliation and willingness to compromise, even if there were great, even irreconcilable
differences between us and the concept of the State in these countries.

In regard both to States with a democratic structure and States with antidemocratic
tendencies, we were consistently motivated by the single aim of finding ways and means to
balance the opposites and bring about international cooperation.

This is the only explanation for the fact that, in spite of the great difference between the
two prevailing Weltanschauungen, the German Reich also endeavored this year to cultivate
amicable relations with Russia. In his last major speech, Herr Stalin expressed the fear that
forces hostile to the Soviets might be acting in Germany; I must, however, take this
opportunity to correct this opinion by saying that Germany will tolerate Communist
tendencies or even propaganda just as little as German National Socialist tendencies would be
tolerated in Russia.

The more clearly and unambiguously this fact is evidenced and respected by both
States, the more natural it will be to cultivate the interests which both countries have in
common. Hence we also welcome the endeavors toward a stabilization of relations in the East
by a system of pacts if these are guided less by factors of a tactical and political nature and
more designed to contribute to strengthening peace.

For this reason and in order to make good these intentions, the German Government has
endeavored from the very first year onward to establish a new and better relationship with the
Polish State.

When I took over the government on January 30, the relations between the two
countries appeared to me more than unsatisfactory. There was danger that the obvious
differences, which had their origins, on the one hand, in the territorial provisions of the Treaty
of Versailles and, on the other, in the resultant tension on both sides, would gradually harden
to become a relation of enmity which, if allowed to persist, could all too easily have taken on
the character of a burdensome political heritage for both sides.

But such a development, aside from the latent danger it holds, would comprise a
hindrance for any beneficial cooperation between the two nations for all time to come.

The Germans and the Polish will have to come to terms respectively with the facts of
each other's existence. Thus it is more feasible to regulate a state of affairs which a thousand
years were incapable of eliminating and will, after us, also fail to eliminate in a manner which
will provide the largest possible profit for both nations.

It also appeared to me to be necessary to use a concrete example to illustrate that
differences which quite evidently exist must not be allowed to prevent that, in the lives of
nations, the form for mutual intercourse be found which is more beneficial to peace and hence

167

to the welfare of the two nations than the political-and ultimately economic -paralysis which
inevitably results from the permanent lying in wait of mutual distrust.

It also appeared to me to be right to attempt, in such a case, to acknowledge and deal
with the problems affecting the two countries in a frank and open exchange of views between
the two than to keep entrusting this task to third and fourth parties. In other respects, be the
future differences between the two countries what they may: the catastrophic consequences of
attempting to remove them by warfare would be in no proportion to any possible gains! The
German Government would thus be happy to meet with this same generous attitude in the
leader of the present Polish State, Marshal Pilsudski, and to lay down this mutual realization
in an agreement which will not only be equally advantageous to the Polish and the German
Volk but also represent a major contribution toward preserving general peace. The German
Government is willing and ready to cultivate economic relations with Poland within the scope
of this agreement, so that here, as well, the period of unprofitable reserve can be followed by
a time of advantageous cooperation.

The fact that the National Socialist Government in Danzig was also able to bring about
a similar clarification of its relations with its Polish neighbor this same year fills us with
particular pleasure.

In contrast, to the great regret of the German Reich Government, the relations of the
Reich to the present Austrian Government are not satisfactory.

The blame does not lie with us. The allegation that the German Reich is planning to do
violence to the Austrian State is absurd and can neither be substantiated nor proven.

It is, however, obvious that a single idea which seizes the entire German nation and
moves it to its very depths will not halt before the border posts of a country which not only, in
terms of its Volk, is German, but which also, in terms of its history as the Ostmark, comprised
an integral part of the German Reich for many centuries; whose capital had the honor, for half
a millennium, of being the seat of the German emperors; and whose soldiers fought side by
side with the German regiments and divisions as recently as the World War.

Even apart from this, there is nothing peculiar about this fact when one considers that
nearly all revolutionary thoughts and ideas in Europe have always made themselves felt
hitherto beyond the borders of individual countries. For instance, the ideas of the French
Revolution extended beyond the borders between States to inspire the peoples throughout
Europe, just as today the National Socialist idea has naturally been seized upon by the
German element (Deutschtum) in Austria out of an instinctive intellectual and spiritual
association with the entire German Volk.

If the present Austrian Government considers it necessary to suppress this movement by
utilizing every means at the State's disposal, then this is, of course, its own affair. However, it
must then also personally assume the responsibility for the consequences of its own policy
and answer for them. The German Reich Government only came to the obvious conclusions
concerning the actions of the Austrian Government against National Socialism at that point
when German citizens living in Austria or visiting there as foreigners were affected.

The German Reich Government cannot be reasonably expected to send its citizens as
guests to a country whose Government has unmistakenly made clear that it considers National
Socialists, in and of themselves, undesirable elements.

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Just as we would be unable to count on American and English tourists coming to
Germany if these tourists had their national emblems and flags torn away from them, the
German Reich Government cannot accept that those Germans who visit another country-and a
German country at that-as foreigners and guests are subjected to this disgraceful treatment, for
the national emblems and the swastika flags are symbols of today's German Reich. And
Germans who travel abroad today, with the exception of the emigrants, are always National
Socialists! When the Austrian Government complains that Germany restrains its citizens29
from traveling to a country whose Government is hostile even to the individual member of a
Weltanschauung which here constitutes the prevailing one, it might take into consideration
that, were these measures on Germany's part to be avoided, this would necessarily result in
conditions which would, in fact, be unbearable. Since the modern German citizen is too proud
and too selfconfident to allow his respected national symbols to be torn down without
resistance, there is no alternative but to spare such a country our company.

I must emphatically reject the Austrian Government's further allegation that the Reich
would even plan, much less carry through, any such type of attack against the Austrian State.

The fact that tens of thousands of Austrian political refugees in Germany today are
taking an avid interest in the events in their homeland may, in terms of its effects, be
regrettable; however, the Reich is all the more incapable of preventing this since the rest of
the world has hitherto not been able to put a stop to the activities of certain German emigrants
abroad in respect to developments in Germany.

If the Austrian Government is complaining of political propaganda against Austria
supposedly emanating from Germany, the German Government has a right to complain of the
political propaganda being carried on against Germany in the other countries by political
emigrants living there.

The fact that the German press is published in the German language and thus can also
be read by the population of Austria is, perhaps, regrettable for the present Austrian
Government, but this cannot be changed by the Reich Government. However, the fact that
German newspapers are published in the millions in non-German countries and shipped to
Germany would constitute genuine grounds for the German Government to protest, for there
is no explanation for the fact that, for instance, Berlin newspapers are published in Prague or
Paris.

How difficult it is to prevent political emigrants from taking action against their mother
country is most clearly evident in the fact that even where the League of Nations is
sovereignly responsible for the doings of a particular country, the activities of these circles of
emigrants against their former mother country evidently cannot be stopped. Only a few days
ago, the German State Police arrested another sixteen Communists at the border of the Saar
who were attempting to smuggle large quantities of treasonous propaganda material from that
domain of the League of Nations into the German Reich. If something of this sort is allowed
so close to the source, one can hardly blame the German Reich for alleged incidents of a
similar nature.

The German Reich Government also refrains from lodging any further complaint
against the neighboring States based upon the anti-German propaganda of the emigrants
which is tolerated there and has gone so far as to institute the performance of a judicial farce
mocking the highest German court, a circumstance which ultimately resulted in a wild
campaign of boycotts continuing even today. The German Reich Government can refrain

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from filing suit because it feels that it is the unshakable representative and trustee of the will
of the German nation. It has preserved domestic security by not omitting to appeal to the
German Volk several times in the space of one year, for its own peace of mind and for the
purpose of enlightening the rest of the world, to have this trust confirmed by way of a
plebiscite while by no means having been forced to do so.

It would instantly invalidate the attacks being directed against the present Austrian
Government were it to finally decide to similarly call upon the German Volk in Austria to
ascertain before the whole world whether its will is identical with that of the Government.

I do not believe that, for instance, the Government of Switzerland-a country with
millions of citizens of German nationality-could have any complaint to make of any attempts
on the part of German circles to interfere with its domestic affairs. It appears to me that this is
based upon the fact that the government in existence there evidently enjoys the trust of the
Swiss people and thus has no reason to blame domestic difficulties on motives of foreign
policy.

Without wishing in the least to interfere in the internal affairs of other States, I
nonetheless believe that I must say one thing: no regime can prevail for any length of time
with force alone.

Thus it will always be a primary concern of the National Socialist Government of the
Reich to ascertain over and over again the extent to which the will of the nation is personified
in the government at its fore. And in this sense, we 'savages' are truly the better democrats.

In other respects, while myself being proud and happy to affirm my faith in the Austrian
Bruderland as my homeland and the homeland of my fathers, I must protest against the idea
that the German temperament of the Austrian Volk would require any stimuli at all from the
Reich.

I believe that today I still know my homeland and its Volk well enough to know that the
throbbing which fills the 66 million Germans in the Reich also moves its own hearts and
senses.

May Fate decree that, in the end, a way may nevertheless be found out of this
unsatisfactory state of affairs and to a truly reconciliating settlement. The German Reich is
willing at all times, given full respect to the free will of Austrian Deutschtum, to extend its
hand to a real understanding.

In this review of foreign policy, I cannot omit mentioning my pleasure at the fact that
the almost traditional friendship to Fascist Italy which National Socialism has consistently
cultivated and the high esteem which the great leader of that people is also accorded in our
country have been further and variously reinforced in the relations between the two States in
the past year. The German Volk feels grateful for the many proofs of the both statesmanlike
and objective fairness which modern Italy has demonstrated toward it at the Geneva
negotiations as well as subsequent thereto.

The visit of the Italian State Secretary, Suvich, to Berlin has given us the opportunity to
exhibit, for the first time, an indication of these sentiments for the Italian people-whose
Weltanschauung is so close to our own-and for its outstanding statesman.

170

Just as the National Socialist Government of the Reich endeavored to come to an
understanding with Poland this year, we have similarly made an honest attempt to reduce the
differences between France and Germany and, if possible, to find the way to a final
understanding by reaching a general settlement.

The fight for German equality of rights which, because it is a fight for the honor and the
rights of our Volk, is one we will never give up, could, in my opinion, be terminated in no
better way than in a reconciliation of the two great nations which have so often shed the blood
of their best sons on the battlefield in the past centuries without effecting any essential and
permanent change in the facts of the matter.

Thus I also believe that this problem cannot be viewed only through the spectacles of
cold professional politicians and diplomats, but that it can be permanently solved only by the
warm-hearted resolve of those who perhaps once faced each other as enemies but who, in
their high regard for each other's bravery, might find a bridge to the future which must rule
out a repetition of past suffering if Europe is not to be driven to the brink of disaster.

France fears for its security. No one in Germany wants to threaten it, and we are willing
to do everything to prove this. Germany demands its equality of rights. No one in the world
has the right to deny this to a great nation, and no one will have the power to prevent it for
any length of time.

However, for us, the living witnesses of the horrors of the Great War, nothing is further
removed from our thoughts than to make any sort of connection between comprehensible
sentiments and demands and a desire to once more put the forces of the nations to the test on
the battlefield, an act which necessarily would result in international chaos.

Motivated by these sentiments, I have attempted, in the spirit of the necessary and
desired cooperation between both nations, to bring about a solution to questions which
otherwise are all too liable to cause a fresh ignition of the passions at play.

My proposal that Germany and France might already now mutually settle the problem
of the Saar originated in the following considerations:

1. This is the only territorial question still open between the two countries.

When this question is solved, the German Government is willing and determined to
accept not only the letter but also the spirit of the Locarno Pact, for there would no longer be
any territorial problem between France and Germany in its view.

2. In spite of the fact that a plebiscite will result in a tremendous majority for Germany,
the German Government fears that, in the course of preparations for the plebiscite, national
passions will flame up, urged onward by fresh propaganda and fueled particularly by
irresponsible circles of emigrants; in view of the already certain result, this would not be
necessary and is hence to be deplored.

3. Regardless of the outcome of the plebiscite, it will in any case necessarily leave
behind the feeling of defeat for one of the two nations. And even if the bonfires would be
burning in Germany, from the viewpoint of a reconciliation between the two countries, we
would be happier if a solution equally satisfactory to both sides could be found in advance.

171

4. We are of the conviction that, had France and Germany provided for and resolved
this question beforehand by mutually drafting an agreement, the entire population of the Saar
would have enthusiastically approved of this solution with an overwhelming majority and
with the consequence that the request of the population of the Saar to cast its vote would then
have been granted without one of the two nations in question having to be made to experience
the outcome of the plebiscite as a victory or a defeat, and without providing a new opportunity
for propaganda to obstruct the mutual understanding budding between the German and French
peoples.

Thus today I still regret that, for their part, the French are not inclined to accept this
idea. However, I am not relinquishing hope that nevertheless the will to achieve a genuine
reconciliation and to once and for all bury the hatchet will grow consistently stronger in the
two countries and win out in the end.

If this succeeds, the equality of rights unwaveringly demanded in Germany will no
longer be perceived in France as an attack against the security of the French nation, but as the
self-evident right of a great Volk with which it not only maintains amicable political relations,
but with which it also has so infinitely many economic interests in common.

We gratefully welcome the endeavors of the Government of Great Britain to place its
assistance at the disposal of promoting these amicable relations. We will do our best to
examine the draft of a new disarmament proposal given to me yesterday by the British
Ambassador in the spirit which I endeavored to explain in my speech in May as being the
guiding principle in our foreign policy.

When the German Government was forced to decide this year to withdraw from the
Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations, it did so because the developments
surrounding the question closest to Germany's heart of granting equality of rights in
connection with international arms control were no longer compatible with what I had to
establish in May as the inalterable basic demand not only for the national security of the
German Reich but also for the national honor of our Volk.

At this time, I can only once again repeat to the world that there is no threat and no
force which could ever move the German Volk to relinquish its claim to the rights which can
never be denied to a sovereign nation.

But I can further pledge that this sovereign nation has no other desire than to gladly
invest the power and the weight of its political, ethical and economic values not only toward
healing the wounds inflicted upon the human race in times past, but also in the interests of a
cooperation between the civilized nations which, as a British statesman has rightly stated,
through the products of their intellect and labors, are what make life in this world a beautiful
thing and genuinely worth living.

After one year of the National Socialist Revolution, the German Reich and the German
Volk have become inwardly and outwardly more mature to assume that share of the
responsibility for the prosperity and good fortune of all peoples which is allotted to such a
great nation by Providence and hence cannot be denied it by human beings.

172

The willingness to fulfill this genuinely international obligation cannot he expressed in
any symbol more fitting than in the person of the aged Marshal who, as an officer and
victorious leader, waged wars and battles for the greatness of our Volk and today, as President
of the Reich, is the most venerable guarantor for the task of peace so important to all of us.

[...]

173

Ward Price - interview with Adolf Hitler
(Cited in the February 19 edition of the Volkischer Beobachter)

February 18, 1934

itler had replied that some people believed the German National Socialists had
something to do with the unrest in Austria. This, he stated, was absolutely false.

"We sympathize neither with Herr Dollfuss nor with his opponents. Both sides are using
the wrong methods. Nothing of permanence can be achieved by the violent methods to which
they have resorted." It had been impossible for the Austrian Socialists to achieve power by
proceeding as they had, the Chancellor stated. It had been equally impossible for Dollfuss to
draw the opponents over to his side by using the means he had.

Everyone knew that it was possible to raze buildings using shell fire, but these methods
would never convince an opponent, they would serve only to embitter him. The only way to
make a revolution successful lay in gaining a hold on one's opponent by persuasion.

"That is what we have achieved in Germany. Herr Dollfuss, on the other hand,
attempted to carry out a coup d'etat. He violated the Constitution and his methods were
doomed to fail from the beginning." Assuming one had proceeded in like fashion in Germany,
what would have been the result? In Austria, Hitler noted, 1,600 persons had been killed and
four to five thousand wounded. Germany's population was eleven times that of Austria's,
which meant that Germany would have had 18,000 dead and 50,000 wounded.

"What are the facts? The total number of our adversaries killed in the disturbances
amounted to twenty-seven, while the number of wounded was 150.

Among them was not a single woman nor a single child. Not one building was
destroyed, not one shop raided.

"Germany's critics will say, 'That may well be, but the Austrian Socialists were heavily
armed!'" So were the German Communists, Hitler continued. All kinds of weapons
imaginable had been found in their possession.

The reason why the German Communists had not made use of these weapons was due
to the fact that they had been won over to the cause of the National Socialists by persuasion,
he said.

The proof for this lay in the election of this past November, in which a mere two million
people had voted against the new regime, although previously the German Communists had
numbered six million and the Social Democrats seven million. The remaining eleven million
former opponents of National Socialism had not been suppressed, but converted.

The correspondent asked the Chancellor whether the developments in Austria would
influence Germany's attitude toward that country. Hitler replied: "By no means, the policies I
uphold are determined solely by German interests." Naturally the incidents of this week
would serve to strengthen the position of the present Austrian Government, but on the other
hand the number of Austrian National Socialists would increase. He was expressing only his

174

private and personal view, Hitler stated, but it was his conviction that particularly the workers
of Austria would side with the National Socialist cause as a natural reaction against the
violent methods the Austrian Government had used against them.

The correspondent then remarked to the Chancellor that the German peace pact with
Poland had come as a great surprise to the world and that several people were interpreting it
as his intention to establish a basis for a joint attack on Russia by Germany and Poland with
the aim of territorial expansion.

Hitler had laughed incredulously and stated: ' . . . What? We take territory from Russia?
Ridiculous!" The correspondent interjected that, ten years before in his book, Mein Kampf
Hitler had recommended acquiring new territory in Russia as a home for future German
settlers, but that the decrease in the birth rate which had taken place since then had halted the
growth of the German population, so that the necessity of a larger area was now of lesser
importance.

In the further course of the interview, Hitler had said that all prior attempts to lay the
groundwork for a lasting peace in Europe had failed because public opinion had held that
Poland and Germany were irreconcilable enemies. He had never held this view. The first
thing he had done after achieving power had been to take steps to initiate negotiations with
Poland.

He had found that the Polish statesmen were very magnanimous and just as peacefully
minded as he himself. The gulf which had been regarded as unbridgeable had now been
crossed. The two nations had come closer together, and it was his sincere hope that this new
understanding would signify that Germany and Poland had permanently abandoned the idea
of resorting to arms not only for ten years, but for all time.

In respect to the situation within Germany, the Chancellor had stated that many
thousands who had been in the concentration camps had already been released, and he hoped
that even more would be freed. They had been interned not as an act of revenge-as had been
the case in Austria-37but rather because these opponents were not to be allowed to disrupt the
process of restoring Germany's political health. They had been given time to change their
views. As soon as they were willing to take a pledge to relinquish their hostile attitude, they
would be released.

The reporter countered with the question, "Do you intend to free Dimitrov, Popov and
Tanev?" and Hitler replied, "The court has pronounced its judgment; the sentence will be
carried out." The correspondent stressed that these had heen the exact words of Hitler's
response.

"Do you believe," the correspondent continued, "that these people will be released and
brought beyond the German border?" Hitler had replied, "They certainly will. "38 He had added
that he nevertheless believed that their release did not reflect the will of the German Volk, but
the court's judgment would be carried out.

175

Adolf Hitler - speech in Festsaal of the Hofbrauhaus

Munich, February 24, 1934

n November 12 last year the Volk made a unique and miraculous affirmation, the
| greatest which has ever been given to a Movement in this world: we are of the

conviction that it will be bestowed upon us again and again, if we again and
again fight and struggle for this Volk. Hence we are also of the conviction that we must stand
up before this Volk many times over. We are experiencing now, in another State, what
happens when one no longer has the courage to step before the nation and ask it for its
affirmation.

Things must never be allowed to progress so far in this country that, out of fear of
rejection, we might have to resort to violence! We wish to bear in mind at all times that the
powers of the German Volk must not be allowed to be squandered at home. Hence in future
we want to give the Volk the opportunity to pass judgment upon us at least once a year.

Just as we have stepped before the Volk in tens of thousands, nay hundreds of thousands
of rallies to ask for its ballot again and again, we must also continue this fight in the future in
tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of rallies and meetings with the purpose of
addressing an appeal to the entire nation at least once every year.

If the appeal ends badly, no one shall be able to say the Volk is to blame, but instead
know that the Movement has become lethargic, that the Movement and other SA leaders on
January 22, 1934 in the Reich Chancellory (following the convention in Friedrichsroda).

Fate has taken from us the cannons, the machine guns, the planes, and the tanks, and
this obligates us all the more to at least gather the entire Volk around us.

This is also the greatest conceivable policy of peace. He who represents an entire Volk
will carefully consider the consequences which might easily ensue from a fight thoughtlessly
started! He who has only a small clique to call his own and must fear being eliminated by the
Volk might be inclined to give in to the temptation to compensate for an absence of internal
successes by external ones.

We do not need any successes in foreign policy to win the Volk for our cause, for the
Volk belongs to us. He who feels that an entire Volk as a whole is behind him will be careful
not to thoughtlessly squander this blood, and he will consistently aim to promote the interests
of the Volk with the instruments of peace, work and culture which the intellect has given to
man. He will only appeal to the power of the nation in dire emergencies. However, he who
knows that the Volk is behind him and does indeed have the Volk behind him can face even
troubled times with confidence.

If we take a stand for true peace between nations, we can also require that the German
Volk not be denied what every decent Volk has a right to demand.

That is why we are just as fanatic advocates of peace as we are advocates of equal rights
and hence of the vital rights of the German nation.

176

Adolf Hitler - interview for "Associated Press "

(quoted in Volkischer Beobachter)

April 4, 1934

^rteich Chancellor Adolf Hitler pointed out at the beginning of the interview that he
JfVwas a staunch advocate of personal interchange, of "man-to-man diplomacy." He
L would most prefer, he said, being able to speak privately with the responsible
leaders of the most important nations, including America.

The antiquated diplomatic method of exchanging notes defeated its own purpose, which
was evidenced in the fact that, despite the endeavors of the diplomats, in 1914 the nations had
skidded into the biggest war in history, although-in his own personal opinion-the diplomats
had been most astonished of all when the War had, in fact, broken out.

The Fuhrer continued: "Any representative of a foreign power will find, when he
confers with me, that I am absolutely frank in stating what Germany is willing to do and that I
do not make my demands any higher than is necessary.

For instance, if I say that we need a Wehrmacht of 300,000 men, I will not condescend
to reduce the number to 250,000 afterwards.

"I want to make Germany's word and signature respected once more.

"Under no circumstances will I subject to a Diktat. If I have once become convinced
that a certain course is the only right course for my Volk, I will adhere to it, come what may.
And what I do, I do openly. For instance, I will never be capable of outwardly accepting
150,000 men as a sufficient force for our Reichswehr and then secretly train and equip
another 150,000 men." Speaking of the armament problems resulting from France's refusal to
adopt the English, Italian and German position, the Reich Chancellor stated: "No one would
be happier than I were the world to disarm. We want to devote all of our energies toward
productive ends. We want to lead our unemployed back to work.

"Then we intend to raise each individual's standard of living. We want to drain our
swamps, reclaim and improve unproductive land, if possible put our Volk in a position to
provide for its own needs, enable the peasant to reap the maximum from his soil, put the
manufacturer and industrial worker in a position to work as productively as possible, supply
our country as far as possible with man-made substitutes for the raw materials it lacks. By
building roads, digging canals, draining swampland, and installing dams and sluices, we are
accomplishing constructive work which has a right to claim our energies.

"As a statesman who is responsible for the welfare of his country, I cannot allow
Germany to be exposed to the danger that one of its neighbors might attack it or drop bombs
on our industrial plants, or wage a so-called preventive war only in order to distract from its
own internal difficulties. For this reason only-and for none other-do we demand a Wehrmacht
which fulfills the requirements of a genuine defense." In response to the question whether
'work for all' meant that a proletarian levelling would take place, in other words whether the
Reich Chancellor would be satisfied if, by stretching the available work, each person would in
fact be assured of a certain minimum income, but that larger incomes would then disappear,

177

the Reich Chancellor replied: "Just the opposite! Naturally the first step must be to eliminate
the scourge of unemployment. However, as soon as our Volk has work again, buying power
will also increase, and then the logical next step is an increase in the standard of living. We do
not want to become a primitive Volk, but one with the highest possible standard of living. In
my opinion, the Americans are right in not wanting to make everyone the same but rather in
upholding the principle of the ladder. However, every single person must be granted the
opportunity to climb up the ladder. I also believe that it is absolutely right that an invention
should first be the property of the inventor; however, his endeavors must be aimed toward
having his invention benefit the general public.

"The first windowpane was a luxury article, but today everyone wants glass.

It has become an article of daily use. The first light bulb was a luxury article, but its
inventor aimed at making it available to everyone. The aim and the purpose of all progress
must be to make a Volk as a whole, and humanity as a whole, happier than before."

Lochner's initial question was: "Mr. Chancellor, what is your attitude toward criticism,
both personal and that in the press?" The Chancellor replied: "Do you know something else?
That I have surrounding me an entire staff of experts thoroughly versed in economic, social
and political life whose sole purpose is to criticize? Before we pass a law, I show these men
the draft and ask them, 'Would you tell me what is wrong with this, please?' I do not want
them to simply say amen to everything. They are of no value to me if they are not critical and
do not tell me which defects might, under certain circumstances, detract from our measures. I
am similarly not in support of the press simply printing only what it has been instructed to
print.

"It is no pleasure to read newspapers which all have almost exactly the same text. In the
course of time, our editors will be so trained that they will be able to make their own valuable
contributions to building the nation. However, there is one thing of which I can assure you: I
will never tolerate a press whose exclusive aim is to destroy what we have undertaken to build
up.

"If an editor's policy is to hold up his own interesting Weltanschauung in contrast to
ours, may he take note that I will then equally make use of the modern opportunities afforded
by the press in order to combat him. I will allow the agents of foreign powers no opportunity
whatsoever. People like these agents are infringing upon their right to hospitality. I warmly
welcome foreign correspondents who report what they see and hear in Germany objectively
and without bias. However, each and every correspondent should make it a matter of his own
concern, for his own sake and for the sake of his reputation as a journalist, not to expose
himself to the risk of having to deny his own reports because he has failed to correctly assess
the effectiveness of our regime. Bear in mind that the press was forced to change its opinion
of Richard Wagner." "Whereas on the one hand, I want criticism," the Chancellor continued,
"on the other I insist that those who work for the welfare of the entire Volk must have the
security of knowing that they can go about their work in peace. The mistake of the systems
which preceded our own lay in the fact that none of the ministers nor anyone in public office
responsible to the State knew how long they would be at the helm. This had as a consequence
that they were able to neither do away with the deplorable state of affairs their predecessors
had left behind nor dare to concern themselves with questions involving the future. I assured
the gentlemen when I took over the government-even those who were not members of my
Party-that they could be certain of the stability of their offices. As a result, they were all
enthusiastic and wholeheartedly devoted to what they were doing, and their sights were set

178

solely on a constructive future." Lochner then asked, "Mr. Chancellor, it has occasionally
been said that, among the gentlemen in your immediate vicinity, there are those who would
like to take your place. It is claimed, for instance, in respect to one of your most prominent
staff members that he attempts to thwart your measures." Describing his own impressions
after having posed this question, Lochner wrote: "The Chancellor's features became
illuminated. It was as though the faces of the various men who had been closest to him in the
struggle were passing by his mind's eye, and what he saw there pleased him." The Fuhrer
replied: "Of course I know that you are asking this question in order to clarify my relationship
to my staff and not because you are personally questioning their loyalty. It would really be
slanderous to insinuate that any one of the men who have stood by me year after year had any
desire to get me out of the way.

"The world has never witnessed a more wonderful example of blind empathy than that
which my staff provides. Perhaps the reason why this type of story comes into being lies in
the fact that I have not surrounded myself, so to speak, with washouts, but with real men.
Washouts have no backbone. They are the first to collapse when things are going badly. The
men around me are strong and upstanding men. Each of them is a person of stature, each has
his own will and is filled with ambition. If these men were not ambitious, they would not be
where they are today. I welcome their ambition.

"When such a group of powerful personalities comes together, it is inevitable that some
friction may ensue. But never has a single one of the men who have given me their allegiance
attempted to force his will upon me. On the contrary: they have subordinated themselves to
my wishes in an admirable way."

With an almost boyish laugh, the Fuhrer replied: "First of all, you should see what my
lunch hour is like upstairs in this building. You would see how new faces appear there every
day. My home is like a Central Station. My home is always open to my fellow fighters,
regardless of how plain and simple their circumstances may be. Our organization reaches all
the way down to the smallest village, and the men of my retinue come from all over to visit
me in Berlin.

"We sit at the table and, with time, they tell me their cares and problems.

Then again, there are naturally many other opportunities to come into contact with the
Volk. I have mentioned this only as a typical example. However, I would like to stress one
thing: although I listen to all of these minor cares and put together a composite picture of the
whole from a wealth of details, I never allow my overall view to become clouded. I must
constantly keep my sights focused on our primary aim and pursue this goal with unwavering
tenacity. I am not equally satisfied with every single detail. Admittedly, I am forced to leave it
to my staff to settle the minor matters.

"We are pursuing great aims. Our primary task consists of adhering to this method. I
need four years to translate the first segment of our program into reality. Then I will require
another four years for the next segment, and so on.

We are striving for an important, a better, and a happier Germany."

Peoples who fight for lofty national ideas lead strong lives and look forward to a rich
future. They have taken their fate into their own hands. Hence the sums of their composite

179

powers do not seldom comprise values which enjoy international prestige and are more
beneficial for the mutual coexistence of the peoples than the "immortal ideas" of liberalism
which confuse and destroy the relations between nations.

Fascism and National Socialism, both related in their basic Weltanschauungen, are
called upon to blaze new trails to productive international cooperation. To comprehend their
purpose and their nature means to promote peace in the world and, with it, the welfare of the
nations.

180

Adolf Hitler - speech at a youth rally in Lustgarten

Berlin, May 1, 1934

(jiff we want a strong Germany, you must one day be strong, too. If we want a

/ J| powerful Germany, you, too, must one day be powerful. If we want an honorable

v_ Germany, you must one day uphold this honor. If we want order in Germany, you

must maintain this order. If we want to once again create a loyal Germany, you yourselves

must learn to be loyal. You are the Germany of the future, and thus we want you to be what

this Germany of the future must and will be.

Therefore you must also avoid anything which impressed the stamp of dishonor upon
the Germany of the past. You must cultivate the spirit of the great community. The German
Volksgemeinschaft is anchored in you. For many centuries, people longed for what has
become reality today. The nation expects you to be worthy of this great age. Above all, that is
what this old, good Germany expects, a Germany which once made incalculable sacrifices for
the Reich and the nation. Above all, this is what the great representative of this Germany of
old, who has today become the benefactor and patron of our Volk, expects. Therefore let us
greet the man who, for us, personifies three generations and in whom we see a symbol of the
immortal life-force of the German Volk: to the German Volk, the German Reich, and our
Reich President, Field Marshal von Hindenburg:

Heil! Heil! Heil!

181

Adolf Hitler - speech at a youth rally in Tempelhofer Feld

Berlin, May 1, 1934

Only a person who is better able to solve a problem is justified to criticize. We
have come to terms with the problems in Germany better than our former
opponents and current critics. We thus do not intend to allow the necessary
authority accorded to the nation's leadership to be attacked by those who perceive nihilism as
the only fitting framework for their own futile activities.

Whenever criticism becomes an end in itself, chaos must be its ultimate consequence.
And just as we defend ourselves against these critics in order to preserve confidence in the
nation's leadership, we for our part also want to do everything to reinforce this confidence.

Millions of people who want to take an active part in reconstruction have offered me
their support. Millions of our former opponents are today standing in our ranks and, thanks to
their work and thanks to their skill as helpers in our reconstruction, are held in no less regard
than our own longstanding party comrades. I may affirm before the German Volk that we do
not perceive the nature of our authority in the effectiveness of cannons and machine guns, but
rather in the actual confidence vested in us.

And just as we struggled as a Party for the trust and confidence of the Volksgenossen
for fifteen years, we are now struggling and will continue in the future to struggle for the trust
and confidence of the nation. For the belief that we-who were once laughed at and mocked-
will one day be able to save the German Volk from misery and ruin was not founded in a
confidence in the strength of any power we had, but based exclusively in a trust in the inner
value of our German Volk. It is the blood-based essence of our nation which has prevailed
again and again throughout so many centuries, which we knew and which thus never let us
despair. For this reason, too, we will allow no one to destroy the trust placed in these values.
The despondent weakling who sees the great events of our age only from the perspective of
his own inadequacy can keep complaining, for all we care, but he should not confuse others.

In this past year, we have thus eliminated all those organizations which we were forced
to regard as breeding grounds for phenomena which undermine the self, cause discord in the
Volk, and lead ultimately to national and economic ruin. When we initiated the destruction of
the German party system on May 2 of last year by taking over the unions, we did so not in
order to rob any Germans of their useful representative bodies, but in order to liberate the
German Volk from those organizations whose greatest damage lies in the fact that they were
forced to encourage that damage be done in order to justify the necessity of their own
existence.

Thus we have delivered the German Volk from an infinite amount of internal strife and
discord which was of benefit to no one except those directly interested, but was a constant
source of fatal harm to the entire Volk. Perhaps there are some employers and entrepreneurs
who today are unwilling to comprehend why we have proclaimed this May Day a public
holiday for which the employer must pay wages. An explanation is called for, and I would
like to give it to you here: In the past, the German economy paid hundreds of millions of
marks per year for the strife and discord between organizations which had torn employee and
employer apart and transformed them into hostile advocates of two different causes. The total

182

losses of national assets caused by strikes and lockouts were enormous. The National Socialist
State has eliminated these primitive and senseless methods of reconciling economic interests.
The resultant savings to the economy are extraordinary. It is only a very small sacrifice when,
in return, the employers pay wages to their employees for a day which is to be the symbol of
the fact that these conflicts have been overcome and that a true Volksgemeinschaft has been
created.

In this past year, we began to establish this Volksgemeinschaft not only in a purely
theoretical sense; we have also endeavored to secure the practical foundations it requires. For
it is not sufficient to overcome unemployment as such, to simply train new workers; rather, it
is necessary to gradually enlighten the millions of our Volksgenossen as to the nature of the
new concept of work.

More than one year ago, the National Socialist Party was victorious in Germany. All
power and authority in the State is now in the hands of this organization. Millions of people
voluntarily subjected themselves to it, and millions of others were brought into line. However,
that does not mean that all of them became National Socialists. The purpose of the National
Socialist idea-to put together a Volksgemeinschaft by overcoming rank, profession, class, and
confession-is not fulfilled by simply registering with a party. One can become a party
comrade by subscribing, but one can only become a National Socialist by adapting one's
perception, by urgently appealing to one's own heart.

The National Socialist State is resolved to build the new German Volksgemeinschaft; it
will never lose sight of this goal and, even if only gradually, it is certain to reach it. The
gigantic organizations of our Movement, its political institutions as well as the organizations
of the SA and SS, the structure of our Labor Front, and the State Organizations of our Army
are all national and social melting pots in which, albeit gradually, a new German individual is
being formed. What we do not successfully accomplish with the present generation we will
achieve with the coming one. For just as doggedly as we have fought and fought again for the
adult man and the adult woman, we shall fight for German youth. It is growing up in a
different world and will be the first to do its share to build another world. In our National
Socialist Youth Organization, we have created the school for the education of the individuals
who will people a new German Reich.

With faith in their hearts and a strong sense of purpose, this youth will one day be a
better link in our Volk's genealogical chain than we ourselves were and perhaps can be today.

The national May Day holiday, which we are celebrating today throughout Germany,
plays a special and enormously significant role in this program of forming our Volk anew. All
of us talk about human culture and personal achievements, but only very few perceive in them
the joint product of mental and physical strength. In the course of the centuries, it became all
too customary to talk about the entrepreneur, the artist, the builder; to extol the technicians
and to praise the engineers; to admire the architects; to follow the work of chemists and
physicists with astonishment-but most of the time the worker was forgotten. People talked
about German science, German craftsmanship, German economy as a whole, and they only
ever meant one side of it. And that is how it came about that the most loyal helper of all was
not only forgotten, but ultimately lost.

When you regard the symbol of today's celebration74 which a German artist created for
us, then it should convey to you the following: sickle and hammer were once the symbols of

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the German peasant and the German worker. The arrogance and lack of reason of a bourgeois
age abandoned and lost these symbols. Ultimately, Jewish international litterateurs stole the
tools of hardworking people and nearly succeeded in exploiting them for their own designs
and purposes. The National Socialist State will overcome this ill-fated development. The
hammer will once more become the symbol of the German worker and the sickle the sign of
the German peasant, and the intellect must form with them an indissoluble alliance, just as we
have been preaching and propagating it for a decade and a half. Therefore we have gathered
together this day not only to celebrate German labor, but also to celebrate a new German
individual. Just as an entire year has been praised in thousands of announcements, articles in
the press, and speeches of the mental workers, today we wish to partake in celebrating the
fame of that army of millions who-as unknown and nameless soldiers of work-have, by the
sweat of their brow, made a loyal contribution in the cities and the country, on the fields, in
the factories, and in the workshops, to produce those goods which rightfully elevate our Volk
to join the ranks of civilized nations in the world and allow it to prevail in honor. And it is
thus also our will that, on this day every year for all eternity, the entire German Volk may be
conscious of what it has in common and, leaving behind it any disputes, may once more join
hands in inner acknowledgement of its common alliance which we call the German
Volksgemeinschaft.

But we do not wish to allow this day to pass without once more demonstrating in
complete unanimity to the entire world our Volk's joint claim to the vital right we all have.
From its venerable Reich President all the way down to each and every worker and each and
every peasant, the members of the German Volk have but one single desire: to become happy
and blessed, each in his own way and by his own labors. The Volk has no notion of revenge
and does not strive for conquests. It wishes to extend its hand to every nation in understanding
and reconciliation. However, it will never waver in upholding its own right to live, and will
defend it against any foe. Above all, it will never relinquish its claim to being a Volk with
equal rights, but it is likewise willing at all times to make sacrifices more than equal to those
which other nations are also willing to make toward the preservation of peace and welfare on
this planet.

We want you, my German Volksgenossen, to celebrate this May Day with us in this
hour in our tens of thousands of cities, towns and villages, but we also want you not to forget
to humbly thank Him who allowed our work to prosper so well throughout the entire year, and
we want to ask Him not to withhold His blessings from our Volk for the future as well. Above
all, however, may Providence allow our most ardent wish to come true: that our German
people come closer and closer together in mutual consideration and mutual understanding in
order to finally attain that goal for which our Volk has fought for millenniums and for which
many generations suffered and millions had to give their lives: a free German Volk in a strong
German Reich.

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Adolf Hitler - speech at the Party Congress
of the Gau ofThuringia in Gera

June 17, 1934

(jl^owever unqualified our love for peace, however little Germany wishes for war, we
TR will stand up all the more fanatically for German freedom and the honor of our

\J Volk. The world must know: the period of Diktats is past! Just as, on the one hand,
we do not intend to exert pressure on another people, on the other we will defend ourselves
against any further attempt to subject the German Volk to continuous pressure. We do not
have the feeling that we are an inferior race, some worthless pack which can and may be
kicked around by anyone and everyone; rather, we have the feeling that we are a great Volk
which only once forgot itself, a Volk which, led astray by insane fools, robbed itself of its
own power and has now once more awakened from this insane dream.

Let no one believe himself capable of immersing this Volk in such a dreamstate again
within the next thousand years; this lesson, which we have learned in such a terrible way, will
be a historical reminder to us for millenniums. What happened to us through our own fault
will not be allowed to happen to the German Volk a second time! My Volksgenossen, I wish
only to bid and remind you to perceive the strength of our Volk in our inner unity of will, in
our unity of spirit and our common way of thinking. Rest assured that strength is expressed
not so much in divisions, in cannons and in tanks, but that it is ultimately expressed in the
community of a single Volkswille. And further, may you be imbued with the conviction that
men must be taught this community and that safeguards must be created for this purpose.
Regard our National Socialist Movement as a great safeguard of this kind against the spirit of
class conflict, class hatred and class division. Regard the National Socialist Movement and its
organizations as one great school of education in achieving this community. Cling to this
Movement, fight for it: in doing so, you are fighting for the German Volk and for the German
Reich! For one thing is certain: the fate of the German Volksgemeinschaft is bound to the
existence of this Movement; the fate of the German Reich, however, depends upon the
stability of the German Volksgemeinschaft.

We are all aware that we are not an end in and of ourselves. The Party, the SA and the
SS, the political organization, the Labor Service, the youth organizations -all of them are a
means to the end of welding our body politic together and thus developing the powers
inherent in our Volk to a truly peaceful, culturally advancing and also materially prosperous
work.

It has been eight years since I first spoke in this city. What tremendous progress! In
spite of all polarities, in spite of all resistance, in spite of all the doubters, in spite of all the
carpers, in spite of all the critics: the Movement is great. Who can doubt that the coming years
will bring about the same progress? Back then it was a handful of people who believed that
the endeavor would succeed. Today there are millions who fanatically vouch for this
endeavor, who profess their faith in it. And if, in the course of eight years, starting with a
handful of men in this city too, this victory was achieved, then in the coming years and
decades this victory will deepen, and all the little pygmies who fancy that they will be able to
do anything to stop it will be swept away by the force of this common idea. For all these
pygmies are forgetting one thing, no matter what fault they believe they have found: where is
that anything better which could take the place of what is now? Where are they hiding what

185

they would put in its place? It is ridiculous when such a little worm tries to fight such a
powerful renewal of the Volk. Ridiculous, when such a littly pygmy fancies himself capable
of obstructing the gigantic renewal of the Volk with a few empty phrases.

What would happen if these little carpers achieved their goal? Germany would once
more fall apart as it fell apart before. But we can assure them of this: they did not have the
power before to prevent the uprising of National Socialism, and now the German Volk has
awakened, and never again will they be able to lull it back to sleep! The Party and its
organizations will ensure that the blood victims and the sacrifices of the last fourteen years
were not in vain. They should know that! They can carp as long as they want; it is all the same
to us.

But if they should ever attempt to make even the smallest step toward turning their
criticism into a new act of perjury, may they rest assured that what they are facing today is not
the cowardly and corrupt bourgeoisie of 1918, but the fist of the entire Volk. It is the fist of
the nation which is clenched and will smash anyone who dares to make even the slightest
attempt at sabotage.

It is immaterial whether we exist or not. What is necessary is that our Volk exists. We
know what those people made of our Volk. We witnessed it ourselves. Let them not say: we
want to do it better the second time around.

You have given us one demonstration of how not to do it, and we are showing you now
how it has to be done!

Germany must live!

186

Adolf Hitler-Speech to the Reichstag

Berlin, July 13, 1934

"jTleputies! Men of the German Reichstag! Acting on behalf of the Reich
j H Government, the President of the Reichstag, Hermann Goring, has called you
\S together today in order to give me an opportunity to enlighten the Volk before this

body, the highest appointed forum of the nation, concerning events which will hopefully live

on in our history for all time as both a sad reminder and a warning.

Out of a combination of objective circumstances and personal guilt, of human
incompetence and human defects, a crisis arose in our young Reich which all too easily may
have brought about truly destructive consequences for an indeterminate period of time.

The purpose of my remarks is to explain to you and thus to the nation how they came
about and were overcome. The contents of my remarks will be completely frank. Only in
respect to scope must I impose upon myself limitations necessitated, on the one hand, by
consideration to the interests of the Reich and, on the other, by the boundaries drawn by the
feeling of shame.

Street riots, barricade fighting, mass terror, and an individualistic propaganda of
disintegration today trouble nearly all countries throughout the world. In Germany as well, a
few isolated fools and criminals of this type are still making repeated attempts to ply their
destructive trade. Since the defeat of the Communist Party, we have experienced, albeit
growing constantly weaker, one attempt after another to establish Communist organizations
with varying degrees of anarchist character and to put them to work. Their methods are
always the same. While portraying the present lot as unbearable, they extol the Communist
paradise of the future and, in doing so, are practically only waging war for hell. For the
consequences of their victory in a country like Germany could be nothing other than
destructive.

However, the trial run of their capability and of the consequences of their rule have, in
the concrete case, already produced results so clear to the German Volk that the
overwhelming majority, particularly of the German workers, has recognized this Jewish-
international benefactor of mankind and inwardly defeated it.

The National Socialist State will wage a Hundred Years' War, if necessary, to stamp out
and destroy every last trace within its boundaries of this phenomenon which poisons and
makes dupes of the Volk (Volksvernarrung).

The second group of discontented is comprised of those political leaders who regard
their futures as having been settled by January 30 but who have never been able to reconcile
themselves to the irreversibility of this fact.

The more Time veils their own incompetence with the merciful cloak of forgetfulness,
the more they believe themselves entitled to gradually reintroduce themselves to the mind of
the Volk. However, because their incompetence then was not a matter of time but a matter of
inborn incompetence, they are equally unable today to prove their worth by positive, useful
work but instead perceive their purpose in life as being fulfilled by voicing criticism which is

187

as underhanded as it is false. The Volk does not belong to them either. They can neither
seriously threaten the National Socialist State nor seriously damage it in any way.

A third group of destructive elements is made up of those revolutionaries who were
shaken and uprooted in 1918 in regard to their relation to the State and who thus have lost all
inner connection to a regulated human social order.

They have become revolutionaries who pay homage to the revolution for its own sake
and would like to see it become a permanent state of affairs. 155 All of us once suffered from the
horrible tragedy that, as obedient and dutiful soldiers, we were suddenly faced by a revolt of
mutineers who actually succeeded in gaining possession of the State. Each of us had
originally been trained to abide by the laws, to respect authority and to show obedience to the
commands and orders it issues, and instilled with an inner devotion to the representatives of
the State.

Now the revolution of deserters and mutineers forced us to inwardly disassociate
ourselves from these concepts.

We were unable to muster any respect for the new usurpers. Honor and obedience
forced us to refuse to obey; love of the nation and the Vaterland obliged us to wage war on
them; the amorality of their laws extinguished in us the conviction of the necessity for
complying with them-and hence we became revolutionaries.

However, even as revolutionaries, we had not disassociated ourselves from the
obligation to apply to ourselves the natural laws of the sovereign right of our Volk and to
respect these laws.

It was not our intention to violate the will and the right of selfdetermination of the
German Volk, but to drive away those who violated the nation.

And when finally, legitimated by the trust of this Volk, we drew the consequences from
our fourteen- year-long struggle, this was not done in order to unloose a chaos of unreined
instincts, but with the sole aim of establishing a new and better order.

For us, the revolution which shattered the Second Germany was nothing other than the
tremendous act of birth which summoned the Third Reich into being. We wanted to once
again create a State to which every German can cling in love; to establish a regime to which
everyone can look up with respect; to find laws which are commensurate with the morality of
our Volk; to install an authority to which each and every man submits in joyful obedience.

For us, the revolution is not a permanent state of affairs. When a deathly check is
violently imposed upon the natural development of a Volk, an act of violence may serve to
release the artificially interrupted flow of evolution to allow it once again the freedom of
natural development. However, there is no such thing as a permanent revolution or any type
of profitable development possible by means of periodically recurring revolts.

Among the countless files which I was obliged to read through in the past few weeks, I
also found a journal with the notes of a man who was cast onto the route of resistance to the
laws in 1918 and now lives in a world in which the law itself appears to provoke resistance;
an unnerving document, an uninterrupted sequence of conspiracies and plots, an insight into

188

the mentality of people who, without realizing it, have found in nihilism their ultimate creed.
Incapable of any real cooperation, determined to take a stand against any kind of order, filled
by hatred of every authority as they are, their uneasiness and their restlessness can be quelled
only by their permanent mental and conspiratorial preoccupation with the disintegration of
whatever exists at the given time. Many of them stormed the State with us in our early period
of struggle, but an inner lack of discipline led most of them away from the disciplined
National Socialist Movement in the course of the struggle.

The last remnant seemed to have withdrawn after January 30. Their link with the
National Socialist Movement was dissolved the moment this itself, as State, became the object
of their pathological aversion. As a matter of principle, they are enemies of every authority
and thus utterly incapable of being converted. Accomplishments which appear to strengthen
the new German State only provoke their even greater hatred. For there is one thing, above
all, which all of these oppositional elements principally have in common: they do not see
before them the German Volk, but the institution of order they so abhor. They are filled not by
a desire to help the Volk, but by the fervent hope that the government will fail in its work to
rescue the Volk. Thus they are never willing to admit that an action is beneficial but are
instead filled by the will to contest any success as a matter of principle and to extract from
every success any potential weaknesses.

This third group of pathological enemies of the State is dangerous because, until a new
order has begun to crystallize from a state of chaotic conflict, they represent a reservoir of
willing accomplices for every attempt at revolt.

I must, however, now devote my attention to the fourth group, which on occasion-
perhaps even unintentionally-nonetheless plies a truly destructive trade. I am speaking of
those who belonged to a relatively small class in society, who have nothing to do and thus
find the time and the opportunity to deliver oral reports on everything capable of bringing
some interesting-and important-variety to their lives which are otherwise completely
meaningless.

For while the overwhelming majority in the nation is made to earn its daily bread by
toilsome labor, in certain classes of life there are still people whose sole activity consists of
doing nothing, followed by more of the same to recuperate from having done nothing. The
more pathetic the life of such a drone is, all the more avidly will he seize upon whatever can
fill this vacuum with some interesting content.

Personal and political gossip is caught up eagerly and passed on even more eagerly.
And because these people, as a result of doing nothing, have no living tie to the masses of the
nation's millions, their lives are delimitated by the scope of the sphere within which they
move.

Every bit of prattle which becomes absorbed by these circles throws its reflection back
and forth endlessly as between two distorting mirrors.

Because their very beings are filled with a nothingness which they constantly see
reflected in those like them, they believe that this phenomenon is universal. They mistake the
view of their circle for the view of all. Their doubts, they fancy, constitute the troubles of the
entire nation.

189

In reality, this little colony of drones is only a state within the State, without any living
contact with life, with the feelings, hopes and cares of the rest of the Volk. However, they are
dangerous, for they are veritable germ-carriers for unrest, uncertainty, rumors, allegations,
lies, suspicions, slander, and fear, and thus they contribute to creating a gradually increasing
tension until, in the end, it is difficult to recognize or draw the natural boundaries between
them and the Volk.

Just as they wreak their havoc in every other nation, they do so in Germany, too. They
regarded the National Socialist Revolution as a conversation topic just as interesting as, on the
other hand, the fight of the enemies of the National Socialist State.

But one thing is certain: the work of rebuilding our Volk and, with it, the work of our
Volk itself is only possible if the German Volk follows its leadership with inner calm, order
and discipline and above all if it trusts in its leadership. For it is only the trust and the faith
placed in the new State which have enabled us to take on and solve the great tasks put to us by
former times.

Even though the National Socialist regime was forced to come to terms with these
various groups from the very beginning and has, in fact, come to terms with them, a mood has
nonetheless arisen in the past few months which, in the end, could no longer be taken lightly.

The prattle of a new revolution, of a new upheaval, of a new uprising- while at first
infrequent-gradually took on such intensity that only a foolhardy leadership of state would
have been capable of ignoring it. It was no longer possible to simply dismiss as empty chatter
what was put down in hundreds and ultimately thousands of oral and written reports. Even
three months ago, the leadership of the Party was convinced that it was simply the foolish
gossip of political reactionaries, Marxist anarchists and all sorts of idlers, completely lacking
any substantiation in fact.

In mid-March I directed that preparations be made for a new wave of propaganda. It
was to make the German Volk immune against any new attempts at poisoning. At the same
time, however, I also gave certain Party Offices the order to track down the recurring rumors
of a new revolution and, if possible, to locate the source of these rumors.

It was found that tendencies had appeared in the ranks of several highranking SA
leaders which naturally gave rise to serious doubts.

At first, there were only isolated manifestations, the inner connections of which were
not yet quite clear.

1 . Against my express order and contrary to reports given me by former Chief of Staff
Rohm, the SA had been blown into such proportions as to necessarily endanger the inner
homogeneity of this unique organization.

2. Education in the National Socialist Weltanschauung was becoming more and more
neglected in the ranks of these certain SA offices I have mentioned.

3. The natural relations between the Party and the SA slowly began to weaken.
Methodical steps were taken, by means of which it was ascertained that endeavors were being

190

made to disengage the SA from the mission which I had assigned to it in order to utilize it for
other tasks or interests.

4. Promotions to leadership posts in the SA revealed themselves upon review to be
based upon a completely one-sided evaluation of purely external capabilities or, in many
cases, on a merely assumed intellectual capacity. The greater number of our oldest and most
loyal SA men were increasingly neglected when leaders were appointed and posts filled,
while those who had enlisted in 1933 and who are not favored with any especial regard within
the Movement were incomprehensibly given priority. In some cases, only a few months of
uninterrupted membership in the Party or even only in the SA sufficed for promotion to a
higher SA office to which an old SA leader was barred access even after many years of
service.

5. The behavior of these individual SA leaders who, for the most part, had in no way
grown to become part of the Movement, was as un-National Socialist as, at times, it was
positively revolting. However, it could not be overlooked that these circles contained one
source of unrest in the Movement, which lay in the fact that their lack of practical National
Socialism attempted to veil itself in quite uncalled for demands for a new revolution.

I drew Chief of Staff Rohm's attention to this and a number of other problems, but this
did not result in any noticeable improvement or even in any recognizable reaction to my
censures. In the months of April and May, there was a constant increase in these complaints.
For the first time, however, during this period I received reports-with supporting
documentation-of discussions which had been held by individual high-ranking SA leaders and
which can be described in no other terms than "gross insubordination" (grofie Ungehorigkeit).

For the first time, there was undeniable supporting documentation in several cases that
references had been made to the necessity of a new revolution in such discussions and that
leaders had received instructions to prepare both inwardly and materially for such a new
revolution. Chief of Staff Rohm attempted to deny that any of these incidents had in fact taken
place, stating that they could be explained as disguised attacks on the SA.

The gathering of evidence for several of these incidents by means of statements of
parties involved ended in a most serious maltreatment of these witnesses who, for the most
part, came from the ranks of the old SA. As early as the end of April, the leadership of the
Party and a number of State institutions concerned were convinced that a certain group of
high-ranking SA leaders had deliberately contributed to the alienation of the SA from the
Party and other State institutions or at least had failed to prevent this from happening.

Repeated attempts to remedy this through normal official channels failed each time.
Chief of Staff Rohm gave me his personal assurance time and time again that the cases would
be investigated and the guilty parties removed and, if necessary, punished. However, no
visible change took place.

In the month of may, several Party and State offices received countless complaints of
offenses committed by high-ranking and middle -ranking SA leaders which, accompanied by
supporting documentation, could not be denied. The offenses included everything from
rabble-rousing speeches to intolerable excesses. Minister-President Goring had already
previously endeavored in Prussia to give the authority of the National Socialist will of the
State priority over the individual wills of certain elements. In other Lander, Party offices and
public authorities had been forced, on occasion, to take a stand against certain intolerable

191

excesses. A number of the parties responsible were arrested. I have always stressed that an
authoritarian regime bears particularly great responsibilities. If it is demanded of the Volk that
it place blind trust in its leadership, that leadership must earn this trust by its achievements
and by particularly good behavior. Mistakes and errors may occur in a given case, but they
can be eradicated. Bad behavior, drunken excesses, molesting peaceful, upstanding citizens-
this is unworthy of a leader, contrary to National Socialism, and detestable to the utmost
degree. Thus I have always insisted that higher demands be placed upon the behavior and
conduct of National Socialist leaders than upon the other Volksgenossen. He who would
command more respect for himself must in turn achieve more.

The most basic thing which can be expected of him is that his life not be a disgraceful
example to those around him. Thus I do not want National Socialists to be more leniently
judged and punished for such offenses than other Volksgenossen; rather, I expect that a leader
who forgets himself in this way be punished more severely than an unknown man would
under identical circumstances. And I do not wish to make any distinction here between
leaders of the political organizations and leaders of the formations of our SA, SS, HJ, etc.

The determination of the National Socialist leadership of State to put an end to such
excesses committed by unworthy elements who serve only to heap shame upon the Party and
the SA evoked extremely vehement counter-reactions on the part of the Chief of Staff. The
first of the original National Socialist fighters, a number of whom had struggled for nearly
fifteen years for the victory of the Movement and now represented the Movement as high-
ranking State officials in leading positions in our State, were called to account for the action
they took against such unworthy elements; in other words, Chief of Staff Rohm attempted to
take disciplinary action against these persons, the oldest supporters of the Party, in courts of
honor composed in part of the youngest party comrades and even of persons who were not
members of the Party.

These conflicts led to very serious talks between Chief of Staff Rohm and myself, in the
course of which, for the first time, doubts as to this man's loyalty began to arise in my mind.
Although I had rejected any such thoughts for many months, although I had personally
protected this man in unshakable loyalty and comradeship for years in the past, warnings
gradually began to leave their mark on me-above all, warnings from my deputy in the Party
leadership, Rudolf Hess-which, try as I might, I could no longer refute.

From May onwards, there could no longer be any doubt that Chief of Staff Rohm was
involved in ambitious plans which, had they become reality, could have resulted only in the
most violent disruptions.

The fact that, throughout these months, I hesitated again and again to make any final
decision, was due to the following: 1 . I could not simply reconcile myself to the idea that a
relationship which I had built upon trust could be nothing but a lie.

2. I still harbored the secret hope of being able to spare the Movement and my SA the
disgrace of such a confrontation and to repair the damage without bitter fighting.

However, the end of May brought even more alarming facts to light. Chief of Staff
Rohm began to depart, not only inwardly, but with his entire outward behavior, from the
Party.

192

All of the principles with which we had become great lost their validity. The life which
the Chief of Staff-and with him, a certain circle of others-began to lead was intolerable from
any National Socialist point of view. As if it were not terrible enough that he himself and his
circle of devotees broke every single law of decency and modesty, still worse, this poison now
began to spread in ever increasing circles.

But worst of all was the fact that, out of a certain common predisposition, a sect
gradually began to form in the SA which made up the nucleus of a conspiracy directed not
only against the normal conceptions of a healthy Volk but against the security of the State as
well.

Reviews conducted in the month of May of the promotions granted in certain areas of
the SA resulted in the terrible realization that men had been promoted to positions in the SA
without any consideration to their accomplishments within the Movement and the SA for the
sole reason that they belonged to the circle of these persons with this particular predisposition.

Individual incidents which are well known to you, for instance the case of the
Standartenfuhrer Schmidts in Breslau, revealed a state of affairs which could only be
regarded as intolerable. My order to intervene was followed in theory, but in fact, it was
sabotaged.

Three groups gradually crystallized from the leadership of the SA: a small group, the
elements of which were held together by a common predisposition who would stop at nothing
and who had blindly delivered themselves into the hands of Chief of Staff Rohm.

In principle, these men were the SA leaders Ernst from Berlin, Heines in Silesia, Hayn
in Saxony, and Heydebreck in Pomerania.issln addition to these men, there was another group
of SA leaders who did not inwardly belong to this circle but felt themselves obligated to obey
Chief of Staff Rohm simply from a soldierly point of view. And these were faced by a third
group of leaders who made no secret of their inner aversion and disapproval and, as a result,
had in part been removed from positions of responsibility while others had been pushed aside
and, in many respects, simply disregarded.

At the fore of these SA leaders who were rejected because of their basic decency stood
the present Chief of Staff, Lutze, as well as the leader of the SS, Himmler. Without informing
me at all and, initially, without even the slightest suspicion on my part, Chief of Staff Rohm
had established contact with General Schleicher using as intermediary a thoroughly corrupt
swindler, a certain Herr von A., whom you all know. ieo General Schleicher was the man who
gave an external framework to Rohm's inner desires. He was the one who upheld and defined
in concrete terms the viewpoint that 1. the present German regime was insupportable; that 2.
above all, power over the Armed Forces and all national associations was to be united in one
hand; that 3. Chief of Staff Rohm was the only man who could be considered for this post;
that 4. Herr von Papen would have to be removed, and he was willing to assume the position
of Vice Chancellor; and that furthermore, other major changes would have to be made in the
Reich cabinet.

As always in such cases, the search for men to make up the new government began,
under the condition that I was to be allowed to remain at my post-at least for the time being.

193

The implementation of these proposals from General von Schleicher was bound to meet
with my unconquerable resistance as early as item 2.

It would never have been objectively or humanly possible for me to have given my
consent to a personnel change in the Reich Ministry of Defense and to have appointed Chief
of Staff Rohm to the vacant post.

First of all, for objective reasons: For fourteen years, I have consistently upheld that the
fighting organizations of the Party are political organizations which have nothing to do with
the Army. In my eyes, it would constitute a disavowal of my view and my policies of fourteen
years to appoint the leader of the SA to head the Army. In November 1923, I proposed
appointing an officer^ to head the Army and not my SA leader at the time, Captain Goring.

Secondly, it would have been humanly impossible for me to ever consent to this
proposal on the part of General von Schleicher. When I became aware of these plans, my own
view of the inner value of Chief of Staff Rohm was already such that I would all the more
never have been able to accept him for this post before my own conscience and for the sake of
the Army's honor. However, above all, the supreme head of the Army is the Field Marshal
and President of the Reich. As Chancellor, I gave him my oath. His person is inviolate for all
of us.

The pledge which I made to him to maintain the Army as an unpolitical instrument of
the Reich is binding for me, due both to my innermost conviction and to the fact that I gave
my word. 162 However, it would also have been humanly impossible for me to have done such a
thing to the Reich Minister of Defense. I myself and all of us are happy to be able to look
upon him as a man of honor from head to toe. From the very depths of his heart, he has
reconciled the Army with the revolutionaries of old and allied it with their present leadership
of State.

He has affirmed his most loyal devotion to that principle to which I will be devoted until
my dying breath.

There is only one bearer of arms in the State: the Wehrmacht. And only one body in
which is vested the political will of the Volk: the National Socialist Party. i63 Any thought of
agreeing with General von Schleicher's plans would, on my part, have constituted an act of
disloyalty not only to the Field Marshal and the Minister of Defense, but also an act of
disloyalty to the Army. For just as General von Blomberg is doing his duty as Minister of
Defense in the National Socialist State in the most pronounced sense of the word, the other
officers and soldiers are also doing the same. I cannot expect that each of them find his own
position within our Movement; but none of them have abandoned their basic position of
loyalty to the National Socialist State. Furthermore, without the most cogent reasons, I could
not have those men removed who with me jointly made a vow on January 30 to save the
Reich and the Volk.

There are certain duties attached to loyalty, duties which we may not and must not
breach. And I believe that, above all, the man who has led the nation to unity in his own name
must under no circumstances commit an act of disloyalty, for doing so would make all
external and internal confidence in good faith disappear, m Due to the fact that Chief of Staff
Rohm was himself unsure whether attempts in the direction mentioned might not well meet

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with resistance on my part, the first plan was designed to bring this development about by
force.

Extensive preparations were made.

1. The psychological groundwork for the outbreak of a second revolution was
systematically laid. For this purpose, the SA propaganda offices spread a rumor-penetrating as
far as the SA-alleging that the Reichswehr was planning to dissolve the SA, which was later
supplemented by the claim that I had unfortunately been personally won over in support of
this plan. A lie as pitiful as it is malicious!

2. The SA was now forced to forestall this attack and eliminate, in a second revolution,
both the elements of Reaktion on the one hand and the resistance of the Party on the other,
while entrusting the authority of the State to the leadership of the SA.

3. For this purpose, the SA was to make all necessary material preparations within the
shortest time possible. By using pretexts -among other things, by falsely claiming that he
intended to implement a social relief plan for the SA- Chief of Staff Rohm succeeded in
raising twelve million marks for this purpose.

4. In order to be in a position to concentrate exclusively on delivering the most decisive
blows, special terror groups were formed under the name of "Stabswachen"i6sand sworn in for
this sole purpose. While an old SA man had starved his way through an entire decade for the
Movement, in this case paid troops were formed whose inner character and purpose cannot be
more clearly revealed than in the truly horrible criminal records of the elements of which they
are comprised, accompanied by the fact that the tried and true SA leaders and SA men were
now thrust into the background to make room for politically untrained elements which were
better fit for such actions. At certain Filhrertagungen and recreational outings, the SA leaders
in question were brought together step by step and given individual treatment; in other words,
while the members of the inner sect made systematic preparations for the action itself, the
second large circle of SA leaders were given only general information to the effect that a
second revolution was knocking at the door, that this revolution had the single aim of
restoring to me my freedom of action; that hence the new and, this time, bloody uprising-'The
Night of the Long Knives,' as it was gruesomely callediee-corresponded to my own aim.

The necessity for action on the part of the SA was explained by drawing attention to my
inability to make a decision; this situation could be remedied only by a fait accompli.
Presumably, these false pretexts were used to assign Herr von Detteni67 the task of making
preparations for the action in foreign countries. General von Schleicher personally took care
of part of this drama abroad, leaving the practical work to his messenger, General von
Bredow.

Gregor Strasser was brought in.

In a final attempt early in June, I had Rohm summoned for a talk which went on for
nearly five hours and lasted until midnight. I informed him that I had received the impression
from countless rumors and innumerable assurances and statements from old and loyal party
comrades and SA leaders that preparations were being made by unscrupulous elements for a
national Bolshevist action which could only bring unutterable misfortune upon Germany. I
further informed him that I had also heard rumors that there were plans to include the Army

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within the scope of this scheme. I assured Chief of Staff Rohm that the assertion that the SA
was to be dissolved was a malicious lie, and that I could make no comment whatsoever on the
lie that I intended to take action against the SA, but that I would personally take immediate
steps to avert any attempt to allow chaos to arise in Germany, and that anyone who attacked
the State would have to count me among his enemies from the very onset. I beseeched him for
the last time to take a stand against this madness and use his authority to prevent a
development which could only end in a catastrophe one way or another.

I once more voiced my strongest objection to the growing number of unimaginable
excesses and demanded that every trace of these elements be wiped out in the SA in order to
avoid that the SA itself as well as millions of decent party comrades and hundreds of
thousands of old fighters were robbed of their honor by isolated inferior subjects. The Chief
of Staff left me with the assurance that a number of the rumors were untrue and others were
exaggerated and, in other respects, he would do everything he could to set things right.

The result of the conference was, however, that Chief of Staff Rohm, knowing that
under no circumstances could he count on me in his planned undertaking, now proceeded to
take steps toward my own elimination.

For this purpose, a larger circle of SA leaders who had been initiated were told that I
myself was basically in agreement with the planned undertaking but that I could not afford to
become personally involved and wished to be placed under arrest for a period of 24 or 48
hours when the uprising broke out so as to be relieved, by virtue of the fait accompli, of the
embarrassing incrimination which would otherwise result for me abroad. This explanation is
conclusively illustrated by the fact that, as a precautionary measure, the man had already been
hired in the meantime who was to carry out my elimination at a later date: Standartenfuhrer
Uhl, who confessed only a few hours before his death that he had been willing to carry out
such an order.

The initial plan for the upheaval was based upon the idea of granting leave to the SA.
During this period and due to the lack of available forces, inexplicable riots were to break out
along the lines of the conditions of August 1932i69 which would force me to summon the Chief
of Staff, who alone would be in a position to restore order, and to entrust to him the executive
authority. However, since it had become clear in the interim that under no circumstances
could one count on such a willingness on my part, this plan was abandoned and direct action
contemplated. Such action was to commence abruptly in Berlin with a raid on the government
building and my arrest in order to allow other actions to follow in sequence, supposedly at my
bidding. The conspirators proceeded on the assumption that orders given to the SA in my
name would not only mobilize the SA throughout the Reich but also serve to bring about an
automatic fragmentation of all other opposing forces within the State.

Chief of Staff Rohm, Gruppenfuhrer Ernst, Obergruppenfuhrer Heines, Hayn and a
number of others declared before witnessesnothat initially the bloodiest possible confrontation
with their adversaries was to take place, lasting several days. The question as to the financial
side of such a development was dismissed with a positively insane lack of concern and the
comment that the bloody terror itself would serve to provide the requisite funds one way or
another.

I now must deal with only one more idea, namely whether or not every successful
revolution constitutes its own justification. Chief of Staff Rohm and his elements explained

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the necessity of their revolution by citing the fact that this alone could secure the triumph of
pure National Socialism. However, at this point I must make it clear for the present and for
posterity that these men no longer had any right whatsoever to cite National Socialism as their
Weltanschauung. Their lives had become as bad as the lives of those whom we overcame and
relieved in the year 1933. The conduct of these men made it impossible for me to invite them
to my home or to even once set foot in my Chief of Staffs house in Berlin. It is hard to even
fathom what would have become of Germany in the event that this sect had been victorious.
The magnitude of the danger was documented all the more strongly by the observations which
then entered Germany from abroad. English and French newspapers more and more
frequently talked of a forthcoming upheaval in Germany, and increasing numbers of reports
indicated that the conspirators had systematically impressed upon foreign countries the idea
that the revolution of the true National Socialists was now imminent in Germany and that the
existing regime was no longer capable of action. General von Bredow, who procured these
connections as foreign agent for General von Schleicher, worked only in respect to the
activities of those reactionary circles which-perhaps without having any direct connection
with this conspiracy-allowed themselves to be exploited as a willing subterranean intelligence
center for foreign powers.

At the end of June, I was thus determined to put an end to this outrageous development,
and to do it before the blood of tens of thousands of innocent persons would seal the
catastrophe.

Due to the fact that the danger and the tension which oppressed everyone had grown
unbearable and certain bodies within the Party and the State had been compelled by virtue of
their assigned duties to take defensive measures, the strange and sudden prolongation of
service prior to the SA vacation leavem aroused my suspicion, and thus I resolved that, on
Saturday, June 30, 1 would dismiss the Chief of Staff from office, place him in custody for
the time being, and arrest a number of SA leaders whose crimes had come to light.

Because it was doubtful whether, in view of the threat of an escalation, Chief of Staff
Rohm would have come to Berlin or anywhere else at all, I resolved to personally travel to
Wiessee for the conference of SA leaders scheduled there. Relying upon my personal
authority and upon my power of determination, which had never failed me in the hour of
need, I planned to dismiss the Chief of Staff from his post at 12:00 noon, arrest those SA
leaders principally to blame and, in an urgent appeal, call upon the others to return to their
duties.

In the course of June 29,1 received such threatening news of the most recent
preparations for the action that at midday I was forced to interrupt my tour of the labor camps
in Westphalia in order to be available in case of emergency. At 1:00 in the morning I received
two extremely urgent alarm bulletins from Berlin and Munich. Namely first of all, that an
alert had been issued in Berlin for 4:00 in the afternoon, that the order had already been given
for the requisition of trucks to transport what were actually the raiding formations and that
this was already being carried out, and that the action was to begin promptly at the stroke of
5:00 as a surprise attack with the occupation of the government building. This was the reason
why Gruppenfuhrer Ernst had not traveled to Wiessee but remained in Berlinin order to
conduct the action in person. Second of all, an alert had already been given to the SA in
Munich for 9:00 in the evening.

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The SA formations would not be allowed to return home but were assigned to the alert
barracks. That is mutiny! 172 1 am the commander of the SA and no one else! Under these
circumstances, there was only one decision left for me to make.

If there was any chance to avert the disaster, lightning action was called for.

Only ruthless and bloody intervention might perhaps still have been capable of stifling
the spread of the revolt. And then there could be no question of the fact that it would be better
to destroy a hundred mutineers, plotters and conspirators (Meuterer, Verschworer und
Konspiratoren) than to allow ten thousand innocent SA men on the one hand and ten thousand
equally innocent persons on the other to bleed to death. For if once the plans of that criminal
Ernst were set in motion in Berlin, the consequences were unimaginable! How well the
manipulations with my name had worked was evidenced in the distressing fact that these
mutineers had, for instance, succeeded in securing four armored vehicles for their action from
unsuspecting police officers in Berlin by citing my name, and that furthermore, even before
then, the conspirators Heines and Hayn had made police officers in Saxony and Silesia
uncertain by demanding that they decide between the SA and Hitler's enemies in the coming
confrontation.

It finally became clear to me that only one man could and must stand up to the Chief of
Staff. He had broken his vow of loyalty to me, and I alone had to call him to account for that!
At 1:00 in the morning, I received the last alarm dispatches, and at 2:00 a.m.

I flew to Munich. In the meantime, I had already instructed Minister-President Goring
that, in the event of a purge action, he was immediately to take corresponding measures in
Berlin and Prussia. He crushed the attack on the National Socialist State with an iron fist
before it could develop. The fact that this action required lightning speed also meant that very
few men were at my disposal in this decisive hour. Then, in the presence of Minister
Goebbels and the new Chief of Staff, the action with which you are acquainted was carried
out and brought to a close in Munich.

Although I had been willing to be lenient only a few days before, in this hour there was
no longer any room for such consideration. Mutinies are crushed only by the everlasting laws
of iron. If anyone reproaches me and asks why we did not call upon the regular courts for
sentencing, my only answer is this: in that hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German
nation and was thus the Supreme Justiciar of the German Volk! Mutinous divisions have
always been recalled to order by decimation. Only one State did not make use of its wartime
legislation, and the result was the collapse of this State: Germany. I did not want to abandon
the young Reich to the fate of the old.

I gave the order to shoot those parties mainly responsible for this treason, and I also
gave the order to burn out the tumors of our domestic poisoning and of the poisoning of
foreign countries down to the raw flesh. And I also gave the order that if the mutineers made
any attempt to resist arrest, they were at once to be brutally struck down by force (sofort mit
der Waffe niederzumachen).

The nation should know that no one can threaten its existence-which is guaranteed by
inner law and order- and escape unpunished! And every person should know for all time that if
he raises his hand to strike out at the State, certain death will be his lot. And every National
Socialist should know that no rank and no position relieves him of his personal responsibility

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and, with it, his due punishment. I have prosecuted thousands of our former opponents on
account of their corruption. 173 1 would have to reproach myself if I were now to tolerate the
same phenomenon in our own ranks.

No Volk and no leadership of State can be held responsible if creatures turn up such as
those we have known in Germany in the likes of Kutisker etc., just as the French came to
know Stavisky,i74and as we are witnessing them again today with the aim of sinning against a
nation's interests. However, any nation which does not find the strength to exterminate such
pests makes itself guilty.

When people confront me with the view that only a trial in court would have been
capable of accurately weighing the measure of guilt and expiation, I must lodge a solemn
protest. He who rises up against Germany commits treason.

He who commits treason is to be punished not according to the scope and proportions of
his deed, but rather according to his cast of mind as revealed therein. He who dares to
instigate a mutiny, thereby violating the principles of good faith and sacred vows, can expect
nothing other than that he himself will be the first victim. I do not intend to have the lesser
culprits shot and to spare the major culprits. It is not my responsibility to ascertain whether
and if so, which of these conspirators, agitators, nihilists and well-poisoners of German public
opinion and, in a wider sense, of world opinion, too, has been dealt too hard a lot; rather, my
duty is to make certain that Germany's lot is bearable. A foreign journalist who is enjoying
the right to hospitality has filed a protest on behalf of the wives and children of those shot and
expects reprisal from among their ranks. I can give this man of honor only one answer:
women and children have always been the innocent victims of criminal acts committed by
men. I, too, have sympathy for them, but I believe that the suffering which has been inflicted
upon them by the fault of these men is only a tiny fraction compared to the suffering which
would perhaps have come upon tens of thousands of German women had this deed been
successful. A foreign diplomat has explained that the meeting between Schleicher and Rohm
was naturally of a quite harmless nature. I refuse to discuss this matter with anyone. The
concept of what is harmless and what is not will never coincide in the political sector.

However, when three traitors arrange and conduct a meeting in Germany with a foreign
statesman which they themselves describe as "business," conduct it privately by excluding
their staff and keep it concealed from me by the strictest orders, I will have such men shot
dead, even if it were true that, at this meeting which was kept so secret from me, they talked
only of the weather, old coins and similar topics.

The punishment for these crimes was a hard and severe one.

Nineteen high-ranking SA leaders and 31 SA leaders and members were shot, as were
three SS leaders who were accomplices to the plot. Thirteen SA leaders and civilians who
resisted arrest sacrificed their lives in the process. Three other lives were ended by suicide.

Five non-SA party comrades were shot for being accomplices.

And last of all, three members of the SS were shot who were guilty of disgraceful abuse
of prisoners in protective custody.

199

In order to prevent the political passion and indignation from spreading to the lynch law
in respect to other incriminated parties, once the danger had been removed and the revolt
could be regarded as having been defeated, the strictest orders were issued on Sunday, July 1,
to refrain from any further reprisals.

Hence as of Sunday night, July 1, normal conditions have been restored. A number of
acts of violence in no way connected with this action are being handed over to the regular
courts for sentencing.

As heavy as these sacrifices may be, they were not in vain if they may serve to bring
about once and for all the conviction that every attempt to commit treason against the internal
and external security of the State will be broken, without distinction of person. I am confident
in my hope in this respect that, if Fate were to dismiss me from my post at any given hour, my
successor would not act differently, and were he also made to vacate this post, that the third in
line would exhibit no less determination in his willingness to uphold the security of the Volk
and the nation.

In view of the fact that, in the two weeks which now lie behind us, a part of the foreign
press flooded the world with untrue and incorrect assertions and reports in the absence of any
kind of objective and just reporting, I cannot accept the excuse that it was not possible to
obtain any other news. In most cases, it would have required merely a short telephone call to
the competent authorities in order to ascertain the groundlessness of most of these assertions.

When, in particular, it is reported that members of the Reich cabinet were among the
victims or conspirators, it would not have been difficult to establish that the contrary was the
case. The assertion that Vice Chancellor von Papen, Minister Seldte or other gentlemen in the
Reich cabinet had had any connection with the mutineers is proven wrong most conclusively
by the fact that one of the primary goals of the mutineers included murdering these men.
Similarly, all reports of an involvement on the part of any of the German princes or of their
prosecution are pure fabrication.

Finally, whereas an English paper has reported in the last few days that I had now had a
nervous breakdown, I must note that in this case, too, a short inquiry would have sufficed to
learn the truth immediately. I can only assure these anxious reporters that I have never
suffered a nervous breakdown, neither in the War nor after the War, but this time I did suffer
from the worst breakdown of the good faith which I had placed in a man whom I had once
protected to the utmost, a man for whom I had veritably sacrificed myself.

However, at this point I must also confess that my confidence in the Movement-and
particularly in the SS-has never wavered. And now my confidence in my SA has been
restored to me as well. Three times 175 did the SA have the misfortune of having leaders-the last
time, even a Chief of Staff-to whom they believed they owed obedience and who deceived
them, men in whom I placed my trust and who betrayed me. However, I have also had three
opportunities to witness how, in that moment in which a deed revealed itself to be treason, the
traitor was abandoned, left alone and shunned by all. But the behavior of this small group of
leaders was just as disloyal as these two National Socialist organizations were loyal to me in
the decisive hour. The SS, aching inside, did its highest duty in these days, but no less decent
was the behavior of the millions of upright SA men and SA leaders who, standing outside the
circle of treason, did not waver for a second in their concept of duty. This gives me the
conviction that the newly appointed Chief of Staff of the SA, to whom I am bound by the ties

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of the old fighting community, will finally succeed in rejuvenating the organizations
according to my guidelines and in making of them an even stronger part of the Movement.
For never will I consent to the destruction of something which is not only inseparably bound
up for all time with the battles and the victory of the National Socialist Movement, but which
also deserves immeasurable credit for its contribution to the formation of the new Reich.

The SA has upheld its inner loyalty to me in these days which have been so difficult for
both it and myself. It has thus proven for the third time that it is mine, just as I am willing to
prove at any time that I belong to my SA men. Within the space of a few weeks, the Brown
Shirt will once again dominate German streets and clearly demonstrate to everyone that the
life of National Socialist Germany has become all the stronger for having overcome a difficult
crisis.

When, in March of last year, our young revolution swept through Germany, it was my
foremost endeavor to shed as little blood as possible. For the new State, I offered a general
amnesty to millions of my former opponents on behalf of the National Socialist Party;
millions of them have since joined our ranks and are faithfully working with us to rebuild the
Reich. I had hoped that it would not be necessary to ever again defend this State with
weapons in our hands. But now that Fate has nonetheless put us to the test, all of us wish to
pledge to hold fast even more fanatically to that which was first won with so much of our best
men's blood and today had to be defended once more with the blood of German
Volksgenossen.

Just as, one and a half years ago, I offered reconciliation to our opponents of that time, I
would also like to make a bid of forgiveness from now on to all of those who shared the
blame for this act of madness. May they all reflect and, in memory of this sad crisis of our
recent German history, devote their entire strength to atoning for it. May they now more
clearly than before recognize the great task which Fate has assigned to us and which cannot
be accomplished by civil war and chaos; may they all feel responsible for the most valuable
possession there can be for the German Volk: inner order and peace both within and without!
I am likewise willing to assume the responsibility, as history be my witness, for the 24 hours
of the most bitter decisions of my life,i76in which Fate once more taught me to anxiously cling
fast with my every thought to the most precious thing we have been given in this world: the
German Volk and the German Reich!

Much to my own regret, I was forced to destroy this man and his following.

[-] What kind of life would one have in this Volk had the precept of utmost brutal
loyalty [to the Army] not been brought to bear here? Where would we be today? Back then,
perhaps we might have been able to take a different path.

What would we have today? I am not claiming too much when I speak of it [the militia
army] as a completely worthless bunch, in military terms. I do not believe in the so-called
levee en masse. I do not believe that it is possible to create soldiers only by mobilizing what
might be called enthusiasm.

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Ward Price-interview with Adolf Hitler

August 5, 1934

le correspondent opened with the following remark: "As eventful as the past few
weeks have been for the Reich Chancellor, they have left no mark on his features.
In fact, he looks healthier than in February, when I saw him last." The
correspondent's first question concerned general armament and international tensions.

Hitler replied: "As far as Germany is concerned, there will be no new war.

Germany knows the terrible consequences of war better than any other country.

"Almost all of the members of the National Government know its horrors.

They know that it is not a romantic adventure, but rather an atrocious catastrophe. It is
the conviction of the National Socialist Movement that war is of no use to anyone and can
only result in ruin. We would not profit by a war.

For us, 1918 was a lesson and a warning. We believe that the problems of present-day
Germany cannot be solved by war. The demands it places upon the rest of Europe do not
harbor the danger of such a misfortune, for they are limited to what the other nations consider
their most elementary rights. We demand only that our present borders be maintained. We
will certainly never fight again, except in self defense. I have repeatedly reassured the French
that there will be no further territorial difficulties between us once the question of the Saar has
been settled; at our eastern border I have proven our peaceful intentions by concluding a pact
with Poland." The Reich Chancellor continued: "Baldwin once said that Great Britain's
defensive border lay, in future, at the Rhine. Perhaps a French statesman might go even
further and say that France must be defended at the Oder; Russia might perhaps claim that its
national defense line runs along the Danube. In view of this situation, Germany can hardly be
reproached for seeking national protection within its borders. To you as an Englishman I may
say that, if England does not attack us, we will never have any differences with England,
neither at the Rhine nor elsewhere. We do not have any claims upon England." In response to
the correspondent's interim question, "Not even colonies?" the Fuhrer raised his voice to
reply: "I would not demand the life of a single German in order to gain any colony in the
world. We know that the former German colonies in Africa are an expensive luxury for
England. The expansion of the British air fleet has not given rise to the least bitterness in
Germany. The English can double or quadruple their fleet, they can make it any size they
choose; it is no affair of ours, because we do not intend to attack them."

The correspondent interrupted to point out that England was building airplanes because
it believed that Germany was building up a large air fleet, just as it had built up a large navy
before the World War.

Hitler replied: "The English did not feel threatened when France built up a large air
fleet. Why should they be excited about German measures for self defense? For us, Great
Britain lies outside such considerations. The steps we are taking are designed to do justice to
the fact that we may well be surrounded by a ring of powerful enemies on the continent who
might one day place demands upon us which we are unable to accept. It is not the volume of

202

arms which brings the threat of war but inequality of arms. That encourages the stronger
nations to harbor ambitious plans which the weaker nations cannot tolerate."

The correspondent posed a number of questions on Austria.

Hitler replied with feeling: "We will not attack Austria, but we cannot prevent Austrians
from attempting to reestablish their former ties with Germany. These States are separated only
by a line, and on both sides of this line live peoples of the same race.

"If one part of England were artificially separated from the rest, who would prevent its
endeavoring to become united once more with the rest of the country? Germany and Austria
were united until 1866." "Is Your Excellency aspiring to reinstate the Holy Roman Empire?"
the correspondent asked.

"The question of the Anschluss," Hitler declared, "is not a present-day problem. I am
certain that the entire affair would be settled if a secret ballot were to take place in Austria.
Austrian independence is not at stake, and no one is questioning it.

"In the Austrian Empire of old, the various nationalities professed an affinity to their
neighbors of their own race. It is only natural that the Germans of Austria are in favor of a
unification with Germany. We all know that this goal is unattainable at present, for resistance
in the rest of Europe would be too strong."

The correspondent mentioned the tremendous power and responsibility which now lay
united in Hitler's hands.

The Fuhrer stated: "Every year I take one opportunity or another to present my powers
to the German Volk. It has the chance to confirm them or to deny them. We wild Germans are
better democrats than other nations." The correspondent asked: "Will you retain the dual
office of Head of State and Chancellor for life?" Hitler replied: "It will be some time until a
national plebiscite deprives the present government of its foundation." The correspondent
said: "Five weeks ago, the world was surprised by indications of a rift in the National
Socialist Armed Forces and by the severe measures applied to eliminate it. Are you confident
that the Party is a completely unified whole?" The Fuhrer replied, eyes flashing: "The party is
stronger and more solid than ever before!" The ensuing section of the interview concerned
Germany's economic prospects. Hitler declared he was confident that Germany would make
itself independent of raw materials from abroad if forced to do so. He recalled earlier
experiences during Napoleon's Continental Blockade and during the World War.

In respect to world economics as a whole, the Chancellor stated that three things were
required for the world's recovery, namely: maintaining peace, the presence of strong, well-
organized governments in each country, and the necessary energy to take on world problems
as a whole. The Germans were willing to cooperate with other nations in this respect if they
demonstrated the same attitude.

In response to a question as to Germany's return to the League of Nations, Hitler
declared: "We left the League of Nations for definite, clearly stated reasons. It was impossible
for my government to continue to take part in negotiations in which we were treated on an
inferior basis. When our complete equality is recognized, we will perhaps return. The British
Government has declared its support of equal armaments, which constitute the major

203

criterion, but unfortunately it has not succeeded in convincing other governments to adopt the
same position." Hitler's next remarks were devoted to the necessity of putting an end to the
war psychosis. He said that he had been striving for a better understanding with Great Britain
and was continuing to do so. Two Germanic nations should, by the sheer power of natural
instinct, be friends. The National Socialist Movement would view a war against England as a
crime against the race. He pointed out that English who visited Germany were always able to
come to friendly terms with the Germans, and it was desirable that even more English would
come in order to satisfy themselves personally as to the circumstances in Germany.

Hitler closed with the remark: "It is regrettable that our old Marshal Hindenburg has
died. Had he lived but a few years longer, he would, I believe, have found a way to make
Germany's sincere wish for peace even more evident

Herr und Frau von Hindenburg! Esteemed Mourners! Deputies, Men of the German
Reichstag ! For months now we have been burdened by a gnawing worry. The knowledge of
the illness of our highly esteemed Old Gentleman filled millions of German hearts with inner
anxiety for the life of a hoary head who was more to us than only Head of State. For this man,
whom the Almighty has watched over for nearly 87 years now, had become for all of us the
symbolic personification of the indestructible, ever-replenishing vitality of our Volk.

The fateful will of Providence had visibly raised him above the measure of the
commonplace. Only when the nation placed its highest rank into his hands did this position
attain the highest honors. For all of us, the German Reich President is indivisibly bound up
with the venerable name of the departed.

Only now, as we prepare to pay our last respects to the dearly departed, has the true
realization of the scope and greatness of this unique life dawned upon us. And we make a
humble bow to the unfathomable Will which serves to shape lives by what seems to be mere
coincidence or triviality in a manner which the inquiring man only subsequently sees and
recognizes in the whole, wonderful framework of necessary coherences.

Reich President Field Marshal von Hindenburg is dead. When we endeavor to explain
the sentiments which move the entire Volk to its innermost depths, we wish to do so in such a
manner as to recall the great deceased in ever more gratitude. Only when, seized by the desire
to do justice to history, we begin our inquiry into this figure, are we able to gauge the scope
and the contents of a human life of a greatness which is manifested only rarely in the course
of centuries.

How much the face of this earth has changed since that October 2, 1847 when Paul von
Hindenburg was born! His life began in the midst of a revolution. The lunacy of political
Jacobinism refused to allow Europe any peace in those days. The concepts of a new, so-called
humanity struggled against the elements and forms of an obselete order. When the year 1848
came to a close, the bright flames seemed perhaps smothered; however, the inner turmoil had
remained.

At that time, the world did not yet know a German Reich or an Italy.

Frederick William IV ruled in Prussia. The House of Habsburg controlled not only the
German Confederation, but also Venetia and Lombardy. The Balkans were mere tributary
provinces of the Turkish Empire.

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Prussia itself, just as the other states in the German Confederation, was internally weak
and incapable of instilling any genuinely strong idea in the people. The disgrace of Olmutz
burns in the hearts of the few true patriots.

Prince William becomes King of Prussia. The young Hindenburg now witnesses the
great triumvirate of the political and military reorganization of our Volk. Bismarck, Moltke
and Roon enter onto the stage of history! While the American revolution is triumphantly
mastering the Civil War, Prussia's path leads from the Entrenchments of Dtippel to
Kbniggratz. And in these regiments marches a young second lieutenant, brave and
enthusiastic: Paul von Hindenburg. A piece of shrapnel shatters his helmet, bestowing a
baptism of fire upon the young fighter for the unification of the Reich.

Four years later, Fate has elected him to be a witness in the hour marking the birth of
the German Reich. When Bismarck finishes making his proclamations on the power and glory
of the new State and its will to augment itself by means of the treasures of peace and culture
and calls 'long live the Kaiser of the new Reich' for the first time, the rapier of Lieutenant von
Hindenburg is also raised and crossed in allegiance to the Kaiser and the Reich.

A life of labor for this new Reich now begins. The great Kaiser dies, a second and a
third follow; Bismarck is dismissed; Roon and Moltke take their last breath-but Germany
grows as a guarantor of peace and a truly European order.

The world is given a new face. In all areas of human development, one revolutionary
invention follows upon the heels of the last. Over and over again, what is better takes the
place of what is good. Germany becomes a major power.

In constant service to the life of this Reich and our Volk, commanding General von
Hindenburg bade his farewell at the age of 64 on March 19, 191 1.

His term of service seemed to have ended. One of the nameless officers among all of the
other tens of thousands who neverfalter in doing their duty and serving the Vaterland but
nonetheless fade into anonymity and are forgotten.

Thus when the World War descended upon Germany and moved the German Volk to
rise in resistance, of the sacred conviction that it had been attacked through no fault of its
own, the Kaiser called out in a difficult hour to a man living in retirement, a man who was
less to blame for the war and the onset of war than anyone else in this world could be. On
August 22, 1914, Hindenburg was assigned the task of assuming supreme command of an
army in East Prussia. Eight days later, the German Volk and the world are first told of this
appointment and thus become acquainted with the name of the new Colonel General.

Wolffs Telegraphisches Biiro makes the following official report: "Our troops in Prussia
under the leadership of Colonel General von Hindenburg have defeated the Russian Army
advancing from the Narew River in a force of five army corps and three cavalry divisions in a
three-day battle in the district of Gilgenburg and Ortelsburg, and are now pursuing them over
the border.

Quartermaster General von Stein" Tannenberg was won. From now on, the greatest
battle in world history was indivisibly bound up with this name. Together with his great
assistants, he averted the crisis of the year 1916 and, as head of the German Field Forces,

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saved the nation from destruction many times over. Had the political leadership of our Volk
been equal in merit to that of the military, Germany would have been spared the worst
humiliation in history.

When the November Revolution finally broke the German Reich and the German Volk
after all, the worst catastrophe was at least able to be avoided due to the figure of the Field
Marshal, which had already gone down in history.

For a second time, the Commander in Chief retired. And for a second time, he was
called upon. On April 26, 1925, the German Volk elected him as President of the Reich and
moreover, without suspecting it at the time, as patron of the new national revolution.

And here I now fulfill my obligation to the truth when, overcome by gratitude, I draw
the attention of the German Volk to the immeasurable service which the Field Marshal has
rendered in history by the reconciliation brought about in his name between the best of
Germany's past and a better German future to which we fervently aspire. Since that hour
when I was allowed to solemnly swear my oath before this esteemed man as Chancellor of the
Reich, I have increasingly sensed the mercy of Fate which has bestowed upon us such a
paternal and generous patron.

Like a mystical arc, the life of this figure stretches from the muddled revolution of 1848
along an unfathomably long path to the national uprising of 1933. The German Volk can only
be grateful for the dispensation of Providence that its "most German" (deutscheste) uprising
was placed under the protection and guidance of its most venerable nobleman and soldier. We
who did not only have the fortune to know him personally but who, each in his own way,
were also allowed to contribute to the miracle of this new resurrection of our Volk wish to
cherish the image of this great German in our hearts in grateful remembrance. We shall guard
and keep it as a precious inheritance of a great age, and we wish to pass it on to the
generations which will come after us.

He who remained so loyal to his Volk deserves to be loyally remembered for all time!
Because Fate has chosen us to lead the Reich and Volk onwards, we can but beg the Almighty
to give us the strength to stand up at all times for the freedom of the Volk and the honor of the
German nation and, in particular, to always mercifully allow us to find the right means to
secure the good fortune of peace for our Volk and to preserve it from the misfortune of war,
just as the great departed always sincerely and wholeheartedly desired.

Deputies of the German Reichstag! Ladies and Gentlemen! German Volk! In this
solemn hour I ask you all to look beyond this transitory moment and into the future. Let our
hearts be filled with a single, firm realization: Reich President and Field Marshal von
Hindenburg is not dead. He lives on, for in dying he has come to dwell above us in the
company of the immortals of our Volk, surrounded by the great spirits of the past as the
everlasting patron of the German Reich and the German nation.

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Adolf Hitler - speech at Hindenburg's funeral in Tannenberg

Monument

August 7, 1934

err und Frau von Hindenburg! Esteemed Mourners! Generals, Officers and
Soldiers of the Wehrmacht! A soldier is normally honored twice in his life:
following a victory, and following his death.

When the name of the Field Marshal and Reich President first rang out in the German
Volk, a long and complete life of fighting and work already lay behind him. As a young
officer of the Great King, the 17 -year-old fought on the battlefield of Koniggratz and was
ordained by his first wound there. Four years later, he is witness to the proclamation of his
Royal Commander in Chief to the German Kaiser. In the years thereafter, he aids in shaping
the strength of the newly united German Reich. When commanding General von Hindenburg
takes his leave on March 18, 1911, he can look back on a full career as a Prussian officer in
the service of war and peace.

It was a great age. After centuries of powerlessness, after never-ending confusion and
division, the German tribes were united by the brilliant leadership of a single man, the
German nation thus created anew. The image of weakness which the Germans had so
disgracefully and so often projected in centuries past was replaced by the manifestation of an
unsuspected strength.

What a wondrous feeling to have played a part in this epoch marking the resurrection of
a German Reich by consistently fulfilling one's duty in the storms of battle as well as in the
immeasurable work of education and preparation in peacetime! And nonetheless, the name of
this man remained unknown to the German Volk as did the names of innumerable other
officers.

Only a small circle in the nation knows these nameless men who unobtrusively fulfill
their duties.

When, three and a half years later, the German Volk first receives word of the name of
General Paul von Hindenburg, the tempests of the World War are raging over Europe. In the
worst hours, the Kaiser recalled the General from retirement and assigned to him command of
the Army in East Prussia. And six days later, the cannons are booming here in the midst of the
beautiful countryside of this old Land of the Teutonic Order, and still three days later the
churchbells are proclaiming throughout Germany: the battle of Tannenberg has been won. A
victory had been achieved which world history is at pains to equal.

And how immense have been the consequences! A precious German Land is snatched
from the jaws of further devastation. In deeply-felt gratitude, millions of Germans throughout
the Reich are passing on to each other the name of the commander who has performed this
miraculous rescue together with his forces. And so much has happened in the space of the
twenty years between August 28, 1914 and the present day! A war which made all of our
memories and concepts of the past pale to insignificance, an incredible, neverending series of
fights and battles, nervewracking tensions, terrible crises, and victories unequaled. Hope is
pitted against despondency, confidence against despair. But again and again the nation is

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brought to its feet to protect its existence; millions of German men do their duty in loyalty and
obedience. For the next century, the German Volk will have no reason to vindicate its military
honor.

Never before have soldiers been braver, never before more enduring, never before more
willing to sacrifice than were the sons of our Volk in these four and a half years. The miracles
of these accomplishments-they are inconceivable if one does not gauge and appreciate the
strength of the man himself. A magic power lay in the very name of the Field Marshal who,
with his armies, ultimately forced the greatest military power in the world to its knees in the
Russia of that time. And when-unfortunately, too late-the Kaiser appointed him to head the
entire Army, he was able, with his brilliant aides, not only to banish the most severe crisis for
the time being but also to rouse German resistance to launch an offensive and win tremendous
victories even two years later.

The tragic end of that great struggle cannot be held against this commander in history,
but is instead a condemnation of the politicians.

With a God-given loyalty to his duty, the hoary Field Marshal led our regiments and
divisions onwards from victory to victory, pinning unfading laurels to their flags.

When the heinous deeds at home broke the resistance, a leader once more retired whose
name had been inscribed for all time in the book of World History.

It was the final triumph of the Old Army that, in 1925, the best representative national
Germany could find was the soldier and Field Marshal of the World War. And it is one of the
miraculous decrees of an enigmatic and wise Providence that the preparation for the uprising
of our German Volk was initiated under the presidency of this superlative soldier and servant
of our Volk and that, in the end, it was he who opened the gates to the renewal of Germany.

It was in his name that the alliance was established which united the stormy power of
the uprising with the best abilities of the past. As Reich President, the Field Marshal became
the patron of the National Socialist Revolution and hence of the rebirth of our Volk.

Nearly twenty years ago today, the bells sounded here and echoed throughout Germany
for the first time in honor of the name of the Field Marshal. Today, to the peal of these same
bells, the nation has accompanied its venerable departed hero back to the great battlefield of
his unequaled victory. It is here, in the midst of the slumbering grenadiers of his victorious
regiments, that the tired commander shall find his peace. The towers of the castle shall be
defiant guards of this, his last great headquarters in the East. Standards and flags shall salute
him.

And the German Volk will come to its dead hero to gather new strength for life in times
of need, for even when the last trace of this body shall have been obliterated, his name will
ever more be immortal.

Dead Commander, enter into Valhalla now!

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Adolf Hitler - speech in Hamburg at the
Blohm and Voss shipyard

August 17, 1934
My German Volksgenossen!

(T R

len our venerable Field Marshal and Reich President von Hindenburg closed his
[eyes for the last time after a blessed life, there were no few people outside the
Reich who wished to see in his death the beginning of heavy internal fighting
within Germany. Elements with whom we can never become reconciled were literally
trembling in a joyful anticipation in which, as has so often been the case, the wish was father
to the thought. "Heavy Rioting in Germany," "National Socialist Movement Threatens to Fall
Apart," "Fight between the Party and the Reichswehr," "Differences between the Leaders on
Succession"- those were the headlines of a certain press whose "sincere" empathy for the fate
of our Volk and our Reich is common knowledge over the world.

These circles were apparently entertaining the pleasant hope that weeks without
leadership in the Reich would afford an opportunity to confuse the public both within and
outside of Germany by an endless game of conjectures and, by doing so, contribute further to
the international insecurity already existing.

In the interests of the German Volk and Reich, this game was interrupted! You can
believe me, my Volksgenossen, when I say that otherwise we naturally would have chosen the
course of first addressing our appeal to the Volk and then complying with its decision. In such
a case, the result would have been no different than now.

By announcing the merger of both offices, the Reich Government-vested with legal
authority-did what the Volk itself would have demanded in view of the given circumstances.

My personal opinion regarding this problem is unequivocally and clearly stated in my
letter to the Reich Minister of the Interior.

Reich President and Field Marshal von Hindenburg was chosen by Fate to be the great
mediator between the Germany of the past and that of the future.

In his venerable old age, far removed from all self-centered desires, he was, for all of us,
the supra-personal representative of our Volk. In the past year and a half, I have thanked
Providence again and again that it decreed that the National Socialist Movement, through me,
was able to render its pledge of loyalty to this true father of the nation; that finally, after such
heavy battles, It bestowed upon me the generous friendship of the Old Gentleman after all,
thus providing the basis for a relationship which brought me happiness and was, moreover, of
great benefit to the nation.

The Field Marshal and Reich President was a unique figure and cannot be replaced. His
mission as Reich President came to fulfillment in his very person.

In the future, no one else shall carry on this title. 221 Regardless of how logical, however,
the combination of the two functions is, and regardless of how irreproachably the law of the

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Reich Government settles this matter in conformity with the Constitution, I must nevertheless
refuse to derive the right to take this most tremendous step toward the new formation of the
German Reich from any previous mandate. No! The German Volk itself shall decide! I am not
anticipating the future and final form of the Constitution of the German Reich in any way
when I believe that I will succeed in adding new honor to the title of German Reich
Chancellor for the future! The right to be able to state such a bold opinion is one I derive from
nearly fifteen years of labor which-whether voluntarily or involuntarily-will one day be
recognized as a transformation and development of historic dimensions.

I would like to take this opportunity as well to dwell briefly on those who believe that
their freedom of criticism has been unjustly encroached upon. In my eyes, criticism is not a
vital function in and of itself. The world can live without critics, but not without workers.

I protest that a profession should exist which consists of nothing but acting the know-it-
all without any responsibility of one's own and of telling responsible working people what to
do and think. I have spent thirteen years of my life fighting a regime, however not by negative
criticism, but with constructive suggestions as to what should be done. And I did not hesitate
a second to assume the responsibility when the blessed Old Gentleman gave it to me, and I am
now responsible to the entire German Volk. And no action will take place for which I will not
vouch with my life, as this Volk be my witness.

However, I can at least claim before this Volk the same right which every worker and
peasant and entrepreneur can also claim for himself.

What would a peasant say if, while he was laboring in the sweat of his brow, someone
kept strolling around on his farm with nothing else to do but go around carping, criticizing,
and stirring up discontent? What would a worker do who is standing in front of his machine
and is constantly talked at by someone who has no skills and does nothing but incessantly
carp and find fault? I know they would not tolerate such creatures for more than a week; they
would tell them to go to hell. The organization of the Movement gives hundreds of thousands
of people the opportunity to play a constructive part in shaping our life as a nation. Any
serious suggestions and any genuine cooperation are welcomed with gratitude. But people
whose only activity is confined to judging and condemning the activities of others without
ever assuming any practical responsibility themselves are people I cannot bear.222ln this State,
everyone is called upon to fight and work in some way or another.

In this State, there will no longer be a right to carp, but only a right to do a better job.

I myself have no other aim in the future than the aim I have had for the fifteen years
lying behind me. I wish to devote my whole life, unto my dying breath, to one task: making
Germany free, healthy and happy once more. Just as I have viewed the fulfillment of my task
in the past as the conquest of the Germans for this same concept, so will I do today and in the
future. That is why the law of August 3 of this year is being presented to the German Volk for
its verdict.

We have malicious enemies in the world. Do what we might, a certain international
conspiracy will stop at nothing to interpret it as something bad.

They permanently subsist on the sole hope that our Volk might once again drown in
inner discord. We know our fate throughout the centuries all too well to overlook the

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consequences. It has always been Germans who have sacrificed themselves as allies of a
foreign design. Ambitious noblemen, greedy merchants, unscrupulous party leaders and
parties have repeatedly become the shield bearers of foreign interests against their own Volk.
The hope for such aid has thrown Germany into the most severe misfortune of war more than
once.

History should be a lesson to us.

Thus I feel that it is necessary, in the face of such speculations, to document anew at
this time above all the unshakable unity of the German Volk at home and abroad.

It was not for my sake that I asked for this plebiscite, but for the sake of the German
Volk. It is not I who requires such a vote of confidence to strengthen or maintain my position,
but the German Volk which needs a Chancellor who is accorded such confidence in the eyes
of the world. For I am nothing, my Volksgenossen, but your spokesman, and I aspire to be
nothing but the representative of your life and the defender of your vital interests.

The burden which a sad fate has imposed upon our Volk is heavy enough.

I am not to blame for this crisis, I am only bearing it with you and for you, my
Volksgenossen, and even if there is a scattering of blinded Germans who perhaps are gratified
at the thought that this crisis might be greater than the power of my resistance, may these
lunatics bear in mind that they are gloating not over my own mishap, but over the misfortune
of the German Volk.

There are millions of people whom Fate has made dependent upon their leadership and
who are defenseless if no one acts as their spokesman, leader or defender. They comprise
millions of German peasants who wish to earn their daily bread honestly and industriously, by
upright and loyal effort; millions of the most efficient German workers who labor in the sweat
of their brows; countless intellectual workers-they comprise the enormous community of
working people who would be helplessly abandoned to demise and destruction were a
leadership incapable of changing the course of their fate for the better.

There is no cause for me to concern myself with those who perhaps today know better
but knew nothing fifteen or twenty years earlier and failed. The Goddess of Fortune has held
her cloak over them long enough. For fifteen long years they were unable to find an
opportunity to seize hold of it. Now she has turned away from these spirits. Fifteen years ago I
pointed out where they had failed, and one and a half years ago I began there.

If they wanted to be fair, after their failure they would have to grant me at least the term
of fifteen years they had to prove themselves. And I know it to be a fact: they will not
recognize Germany then, just as Germany will not recognize them. And if they further want to
be just, they must acknowledge to me that I have been more industrious in these fifteen years
than my opponents. For they had the power and everything which goes with it, while I was
forced, starting with nothing, to wage a bitter and difficult battle to gain it.

And all the same, even my most malicious libellers cannot deny that I have never
changed in these fifteen years.

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Whether in good fortune or in bad, whether in liberty or in prison, I have remained true
to my flag, the flag which is now the national flag of the German Reich. And they further
cannot claim that I had ever in my life undertaken or omitted any political act for the sake of
my own personal benefit.

And they must finally admit that, in general terms, this fifteen-year-long battle of mine
was not unsuccessful, but led a movement evolving from nothing to victory in Germany,
giving the German Volk a new and better position at home and abroad.

I will gladly answer for and accept whatever mistakes they can prove that I actually
made. However, these all lie within the limits set for everyone by the basic fact of human
fallibility. But I can point out in this context that I have never in the course of my fight
committed an act which I did not hold to be for the benefit of the German Volk.

For since I have become involved in the political fight, I have been governed and
guided, so help me God, by a single thought: Germany!

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Adolf Hitler - appeal to the German Volk and the NSDAP

National Socialists! German Volksgenossen!

/ IJ^he fifteen-year struggle of our Movement for power in Germany came to an end

I yesterday. Beginning from the highest point of the Reich, throughout the entire

^^Kadministration and down to the leadership in the smallest village, the German

Reich is now in the hands of the National Socialist Party. This is the reward for immeasurable

labors, for countless sacrifices. I thank all those who, by casting their votes yesterday, have

contributed toward documenting the unity of State and Movement before the entire world.

It will be my task and the task of us all to consolidate this unity and to win over the few
remaining members of our Volk to the National Socialist idea and doctrine in a struggle as
brilliant as it will be resolute and persistent.

The resolutions for the implementation of this action have already been passed this
evening; the action itself will be carried out with National Socialist speed and thoroughness.
Today marks the close of the fight for the authority of the State. But the fight for our precious
Volk will go on. The goal stands firm and unshakable: there must and will come a day on
which every last German shall carry the symbol of the Reich in his heart as a sign of his
belief.

Berlin, August 20, 1934 Adolf Hitler Party Comrades! Yesterday's glorious victory of
our National Socialist Party is due foremost to your loyalty, your willingness to make
sacrifices, and your industry. As political fighters of the Movement, as SA and SS men, as
members of our workers', youth and women's organizations, you have rendered a unique
service. Filled with boundless confidence in you, I am determined to take up anew and
continue waging the battle for the soul and the unity of the German Volk. In this new struggle
for our Volk, you will stand beside me as you have in the fifteen years which lie behind us.
And just as we succeeded in conquering ninety percent of the German Volk for National
Socialism, we will and must be able to win over the last ten percent as well. This will be the
crowning glory of our victory.

Berlin, August 20, 1934 Adolf Hitler

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Adolf Hitler - proclamation
read by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner

Niirnberg, September 5, 1934

e wish to establish two realizations as historic facts:

1. The year from September 1933 to September 1934 brought with it the final
consolidation of National Socialist power in Germany. The Congress of Victory marked the
beginning of a battle of pursuit in the course of which we broke up and captured our enemies'
positions one after another.

2. For the National Socialist leadership of state, this period at the same time constituted
a year of tremendous constructive and productive work.

This inevitably leads to the unquestionable conclusion: the National Socialist
Revolution has now come to an end as a revolutionary and powerrelated process! As a
revolution, it has completely fulfilled what could be expected of it. The world does not live on
wars, and similarly the Volk does not live on revolutions.

Both cases can, at most, provide the basis for a new life. But no good will come of it if
the act of destruction is not accomplished for the sake of a better and thus higher idea, but is
exclusively subject to the nihilistic drives of destruction and will thus result not in the
formation of something better but in unending hatred.

A revolution which perceives its sole purpose as the defeat of a political opponent, the
destruction of earlier accomplishments, or in the elimination of existing circumstances will
lead to nothing better than a world war which will reach its appalling culmination-or rather its
logical progression-in a mad Diktat.

Genuine revolutions are only conceivable as the consummation of a new calling to
which the will of the Volk assigns its historic task in this way. And today this leadership of
the Volk has the power to do anything in Germany! Who can deny that the National Socialist
Movement has become the omnipotent master over the German Reich? The crowning glory of
this political development is expressed symbolically in the fact that the Wehrmacht has
adopted the sovereign symbol of the Movement; in the fact that the leader of the Party has
been elected to head of state of the German nation, and the Wehrmacht and administration of
the Reich subsequently pledged an oath of allegiance to him. Thus we shall crush any and all
attempts to instigate acts of violence against the leadership of the National Socialist
Movement and of the Reich and nip them in the bud, regardless of whom they originate from.

We all know to whom the nation has given its mandate! Woe betide anyone who does
not know this or forgets it! Revolutions have always been rare in the German Volk. The
nervous age of the nineteenth century has finally come to an end with us.

There will not be another revolution in Germany for the next thousand years!

Tremendous was, above all, the work which had to be done in the areas of decay which
manifested itself most evidently at the time.

214

He who finds fault with the economic policy of these past twelve months can only be
malicious or have taken leave of his senses.

When we took power, Germany's economy was in what seemed to be an unstoppable
process of shrinking. Fear and distrust, despondency and despair comprised the breeding
ground for a development whose collapse could be clearly foreseen. These successes are the
convincing proof of the effectiveness of our economic policy and the German Volk's
confidence in it:

1. The executive destruction of German peasantry was not only stopped, but fully
eliminated.

2. The measures taken to create work have, on a large scale, been attended by
tremendous success.

3. The number of unemployed has decreased by an estimated four and a half million.

4. The German mark has remained stable, and that in spite of the many export problems.

5. Savings deposits have grown tremendously.

6. The volume of traffic has undergone enormous increases on the railroads, in terms of
motorized traffic, and in the air.

7. The receipts from contributions and taxes have far surpassed estimates in respect to
all voluntary, nonstate and state organizations as well as to all public funds.

When, two years ago, we predicted that this development would take place if we took
power, this was not only challenged and denied, but claimed to be impossible and even
dismissed with scorn. And today these same people who did nothing but ruin Germany by
their own labors now dare to claim that our achievements are trivial and insignificant. But
where would Germany be had these destructive elements governed for even one year longer?
This year which lies behind us has accomplished the tremendous preliminary work for
projects which will only become visibly evident to the nation in the course of the next few
years. The gigantic roadbuilding plans could not be pulled out of a hat from one day to the
next, but required a certain amount of time alone for their conception and design. But the
German Volk will see what preliminary work has been accomplished during these twelve
months in what will be carried out in the years to come. In addition to the national network of
roads, tremendous new national railway stations have been completed in the conceptual and
design stages. Revolutionary construction programs are being drawn up for a whole series of
major German cities, the magnitude of which will only be able to be fully and finally
appreciated after decades have passed.

Some industries have been broken up, new industries have been founded; the settlement
policy was consolidated in order to be more effective in broad points of view.

In order to combat the world boycott, the substitution of raw materials was begun and
the initial preparations undertaken to make Germany independent of this need. Constantly
guided by a single belief: no matter what happens, National Socialism will never capitulate!

215

Posterity shall one day say of us: never was the German nation stronger and never its
future more secure than at the time when the ancient Germanic peoples' old mystical symbol
of salvation (Heilszeichen) was rejuvenated in Germany to become the symbol of the Third
Reich.

Long live our German Volk, long live the National Socialist Party and our Reich!

216

Adolf Hitler - speech to the DAF and RAD

Niirnberg, September 6, 1934

(jjf t is a great undertaking to educate an entire Volk in this new concept of work and

/ J| this new opinion of work. We have taken up the challenge, and we will succeed,

v and you will be the first to bear witness to the fact that this work cannot fail! The

entire nation will learn the lessons of your lives! A time will come when not a single German

can grow into the community of this Volk who has not first made his way through your

community.

And we know that then, for millions of our Volksgenossen, work will no longer be a
burning issue but a concept uniting all, and that above all there will no longer be anyone
living in Germany who insists upon seeing in manual labor something less than in any other
type of work. We do not want to be socialists in theory only; we want to seize hold of this
genuine problem, too, as genuine National Socialists, and find a genuine solution. And this
great task will be accomplished because behind it stands not only the Weltanschauung of a
Movement controlling Germany; behind it stands our will! Today, for the first time, you will
march in ranks of tens of thousands into the city of the German Reich Party Congresses, and
you will be conscious that in this moment not only the eyes of hundreds of thousands in
Nuremberg will see you, but in this moment Germany will see you for the first time. And I
know that, just as you are serving this Germany in proud devotion, Germany will proudly and
happily see in you today its sons marching past.

Heil!

217

Adolf Hitler - speech before 200 000 political leaders

Niirnberg, September 7, 1934

(jjjt'or the first time in years, I am once again taking part in a convention of National

Jff Socialist women and thus of National Socialist women's work. I know that the

v_ J prerequisites for this have been established by the work of innumerable individual

women and, in particular, by the work of their female leaders. The National Socialist

Movement has not only seen but also found in woman its most loyal assistant from the time of

its conception onwards.

I remember the difficult years of the Movement's fight and especially those times in
which good fortune seemed to have turned away from us; those times when many of us were
in prisons, others had once more become fugitives, still others were in foreign parts; many of
us were lying wounded in sick bays or had been killed. I remember the time when there were
those among us who turned back, believing that we would never make it in the end; a time in
which the spirit pervading Germany arrogantly believed that it could approach the problems
only from the angle of reason, and when many lost faith in us as a result. I know that back
then there were innumerable women who remained unshakably loyal to the Movement and to
me.

At that time, the power of emotion truly proved itself to be stronger and better. We have
seen that the clever mind can be misled only all too easily, that ostensibly intellectual
arguments can cause men of weak intellect to falter, and that it is particularly in these times
that the most profound inner instinct of preservation of the self and of the Volk awakens in a
woman. Woman has proven to us that she knows what is right! In those times when the great
Movement seemed, to many, to falter and all were united against us, the stability and sureness
of emotion prevailed as stable factors when confronted with brooding intellect and supposed
knowledge. For only very few are endowed with the talent of penetrating superficial
knowledge to the most profound inner meaning. But this most profound insight is ultimately
the root of the world of emotion. That which perhaps only few philosophically gifted
intellects are capable of analyzing scientifically can be sensed by the nature of an unspoiled
human being with instinctive certainty. The feeling and, above all, the nature of woman has
always acted throughout the ages as a supplement to the intellect of man.

And if at times in the course of human life the working spheres of men and women have
shifted to become unnaturally aligned, this happened not because woman aspired to rule over
man; rather, the reason lies in the fact that man was no longer capable of completely fulfilling
his task. That, of course, is the miraculous thing about Nature and Providence: no conflict is
possible in the relations between the two sexes as long as each fulfills the task assigned to it
by Nature.

The catchword "Women's Liberation" is merely a phrase invented by the Jewish
intellect, and its contents are marked by the same spirit. The German woman will never need
to emancipate herself in an age supportive of German life. She possessed what Nature gave
her automatically as an asset to maintain and preserve; just as the man, in such an age, never
had to fear that he would be ousted from his position in respect to woman.

218

Woman has been the last to contest man's right to his position. Only when he was no
longer sure of himself in recognizing his duty did the immortal instinct of survival and
preservation begin to revolt in woman. After this revolt, a shift took place which was not in
accordance with Nature's design, and it prevailed until both sexes returned to what an
eternally wise Providence assigned to them.

If it is said that a man's world is the State, that the man's world is his struggle, his
willingness to devote himself to the community, one might perhaps say that a woman's world
is a smaller one. For her world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home. But
where would the larger world be if no one wanted to care for the small world? How could the
larger world survive if there was no one who would make the cares of the smaller world the
content of his life? No, the large world is built upon this small world! This greater world
cannot survive if the small world is not firm. Providence assigned to woman the care of this,
her very own world, and it is only on this foundation that the man's world can be formed and
can grow.

However, these two worlds are never opposed to one another. They mutually
complement each other, they belong together, just as man and wife belong together.

We do not feel that it is right when a woman forces her way into a man's world, in
territory belonging to him; instead, we feel it is natural when both of these worlds remain
divorced from one another. One of the worlds is home to the power of feelings, the power of
the soul! The other is home to the power of recognition, the power of toughness, of resolution,
and of fighting morale! In one case, this power requires the full willingness of the woman to
devote her life to maintaining and multiplying this important cell, and in the other case it
requires the willingness of the man to safeguard life.

What a man sacrifices in struggling for his Volk, a woman sacrifices in struggling to
preserve this Volk in individual cases. What a man gives in heroic courage on the battlefield,
woman gives in eternally patient devotion, in eternally patient suffering and endurance. Every
child to which she gives birth is a battle which she wages in her Volk's fateful question of to
be or not to be.

And hence both must mutually value and respect each other by recognizing that each
part is accomplishing the task assigned to it by Nature and Providence. The performance of
these two tasks will necessarily result in mutual respect.

What the Jewish intellect maintains is not true-that respect is determined by the
overlapping of the spheres of activity of the two sexes-but rather this respect requires that
neither of the sexes endeavors to do what belongs to the other. This respect ultimately lies in
the knowledge of each half that the other is doing everything necessary to maintain the whole!
Therefore, woman throughout the ages has always been the helpmate of man and thus his
most loyal friend, and man, too, has been the protector of his wife throughout the ages and
thus her best friend. And both perceived in this manner of living the common foundation for
the existence of what they loved, and of its continued subsistence in the future. Woman is an
egoist in maintaining her small world, putting man in a position to preserve the greater world,
and man is an egoist in maintaining this greater world, for the one is indissolubly bound up
with the other. We will stand up against an intellectualism of the most depraved sort which
would tear asunder what God hath joined.

219

Because woman originates in the most basic root of all, she is also the most stable
element in the preservation of a people.

Ultimately, she has the most infallible sense for whatever is necessary to prevent a race
from ceasing to be, for her children would bear the major brunt of all the suffering.

Man is often far too mentally instable to find the right path by means of these basic
insights. However, given favorable times and a good education, man will know just as well
what his task is. We National Socialists have therefore protested for many years against
deploying woman in political life, for in our view this would be unworthy. A woman once
said to me: you must see to it that women join parliament, for woman alone is capable of
ennobling it. I do not believe, I replied to her, that human beings were meant to ennoble what
is bad by its very nature, and a woman who became caught in the gears of this parliamentary
system would not ennoble parliament; rather, this system would dishonor such a woman. I do
not want to leave something to women which I intend to take away from men. Our opponents
claimed that we would then never gain women for the Movement. But we have gained more
than all of the other parties put together, and I know that we would have won over every last
German woman had she been given but one opportunity to study parliament and the
degrading role women play there.

For this reason we have integrated woman in the fight of the volkisch community in
accordance with the decrees of Nature and Providence. To us, our women's movement is thus
not something which inscribes on its banner the fight against man as its program, but rather
something which takes up in its program the mutual fight together with man. It is thus that we
have strengthened the new National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft, thus that we have gained, in
millions of women, the most loyal and zealous fellow fighters. Female fighters for a life
together in the service of together preserving our life. Fighters who fix their gaze not upon the
rights which a Jewish intellectualism pretends to offer them, but upon the obligations which
Nature has burdened upon us all.

Whereas in the past, the liberal and intellectualistic women's movements included
many, many items in their programs which originated in a so-called intellect, the program of
our National Socialist Women's Movement actually contains only a single item, and this item
is: the child, this tiny creature who must come into being and flourish, who constitutes the
sole purpose of the entire struggle for existence. For what would be the purpose of our
fighting and struggling if there were not something to come after us which can make use of
and pass on what we attain today for its own benefit and avail? What else could be the
purpose of humanity's entire struggle? Why else the worry and the suffering? For the mere
sake of an idea? Only for an idea? Only for a theory? No, that would not be worth traversing
this earthly vale of tears.

The only thing which allows us to overcome all of that is shifting, our gaze from the
present to the future, away from ourselves to that which is growing up to follow us.

A few moments ago, I spoke before the youth rally. It is a glorious thing to look out
over this golden youth in the knowledge that it will one day be Germany when we no longer
exist! It will preserve the sum of what we are creating and building up. It is for this youth that
we are working. That is the real purpose of the entire struggle! And in recognizing this, the
most elementary and lapidary goal of Nature, the labors of the two sexes will logically and
rightfully fall into place for us, no longer in conflict, but in a common fight for the real life.

220

You, my female party comrades, are waging this battle as leaders, organizers and
helpers. You have joined in taking on a glorious task. That which we wish to shape within our
Volk on a large scale is that for which you must internally form a firm support and a solid
foundation. You must impart spiritual and emotional reinforcement and stability from within!
In this battle which we are waging today for the freedom, equality of rights, honor, and peace
of our Volk, you must be a complement to man, so that we can prevail as real fighters before
our Volk and for our Volk with our sights set on the future.

Then strife and discontent will never be able to flare up between the two sexes, but they
will instead traverse this life fighting together, hand in hand, fulfilling the wishes of a
Providence which created both of them for this purpose. And then the blessings of these
mutual endeavors will not be withheld.

Then no mad fight over theories will flare up, then man and woman will not turn against
one another because of false notions, for then the blessing of the Almighty will rest upon their
joint struggle for life!

221

Adolf Hitler - speech before the SA and the SS

Niirnberg, September 9, 1934

MenoftheSAandSS!

(jjjt'or the fourth time in the history of the Party, the SA and the SS have assembled
JJThere. Twelve months ago as a sign of having gained power in the State! Today, to
v_ J testify that this process was carried on and completed! Today, the power of the
German Reich lies in our hands. The National Socialist Movement is today the master of
Germany. In the twelve months lying behind us, we took possession over one position after
another. No one who is willing to open his eyes can believe that this regime can be eliminated
or that it would even consider stepping down of its own accord.

But these twelve months also comprised a period of hard work within the National
Socialist Movement itself. When I decided to convene another Party Congress after such a
short time in order to summon you, my comrades in the SA and SS, to this place, I did it for a
particular reason. A few months ago, a dark shadow was cast over the Movement. Many of
our opponents believed that they could see the day approaching on which the power of the
National Socialist Party would perhaps come to an end. I have summoned you to this place,
my comrades, in order to document three things:

1. the SA had as little to do with this shadow as any other institution in the Party;

2. in order to demonstrate to everyone that my relationship to you, my comrades, is the
same as it has been for fourteen years; and

3. in order to show our enemies that the Party stands firm and that its SA and its SS
stand firm as guarantors of the National Socialist Revolution.

They are all mistaken, those who believe that even a single crack has appeared in the
structure of our Movement. It is standing as solidly as this block here! And it will be broken
by nothing in Germany. If someone sins against the spirit and purpose of our Movement, if he
sins against the spirit of my SA, this shall not affect the SA, but those very persons who dared
to sin against it.

We have lined up for this roll call not only to demonstrate how indestructibly solid the
structure of the Movement and its organization is, but also to demonstrate how it continues to
be filled by the spirit of loyalty, of discipline and of obedience, and in order to assign 126
standards to the SA and 57 standards to the SS.

These new ensigns of the Movement will now join forces with the great columns of our
old standards. You will put them at your fore and follow them loyally as you have the old.

These ensigns will serve to remind you of what made you great. You will remember the
long years of difficult battles, of sacrifices, when it seemed almost impossible that we would
be able to conquer the State. And you will recall the great persistence during the time of
struggle which was required to wage this battle for Germany. You will learn from this the

222

lesson that we must not allow what once enabled us to be victorious to desert us after the
victory, but must hold fast today even more than in the past to the virtues of old.

SA members and SA leaders have no choice but to be loyal, obedient, disciplined,
modest, and willing to sacrifice-for otherwise they are not men of the SA.

Holding fast to these virtues of old will not only make our power indestructible; it will
also mean that the resurrection of the German Volk will continue to have an effect far into the
future. For we are not simply a manifestation of months or years; what has come about in
these fifteen years shall live on for centuries.

Only a lunatic or a deliberate liar can claim that I or anyone else ever entertained the
thought of dissolving what we ourselves have built up in long years. My comrades, we now
stand firmly united for our Germany, and we must stand united for this Germany. We want to
continue to strengthen the Movement in the years ahead of us by more strongly than before
consolidating the individual organizations and fusing them together to form a single whole.

Our flag shall truly fly over a single and unified Movement. That is our goal.

And if we work toward this goal, no one will dare to put up resistance or oppose this
organization, the most tremendous of its kind in German history.

Thus I assign to you the new ensigns in the conviction that I am placing them in the
most loyal hands in all of Germany.

In times past, you have proven your loyalty to me a thousand times over.

In times to come, this cannot and will not change.

Hence let me now welcome you as my old and loyal men of the SA and 55: Sieg Heil!

Ill

Adolf Hitler - speech at the opening of the second Winterhilfswerk

(Excerpions)

Berlin on October 9, 1934

ius prosperity means not only an increase in the possibilities of enjoyment, but

above all an increase in obligations. The view that the spending of a fortune of

'any size is the private affair of the individual requires revision in the National

Socialist State all the more because no single individual could enjoy such a privilege without

the collaboration of the whole.

If I turn particularly to these circles who enjoy average to above-average standing, I am
doing so because I am sufficiently acquainted with the willingness to sacrifice exhibited by
the broad masses of our Volk in the cities and out in the country and know that the latter, who
have so often suffered firsthand from the curse of unemployment and economic misery, have
the most sympathy with their Volksgenossen who are still unfortunate today.

However, I believe that it is necessary to point out one thing in particular here: The
insurance business in Germany today has been built up to cover a large network. Today,
people insure themselves against fire and water damage, against theft, against burglary,
against hailstorms and drought, against sickness and death-and spend billions doing so. But
woe betide a people which forgets that the most precious possession it should insure is its
political common sense. That same political common sense which is soundly embodied in the
Volksgemeinschaft.

The German Volk can pride itself today that it has found its way back to this common
sense. But let everyone be conscious of how tremendous is the benefit for all which generates
from this sound political development.

You might care, my Volksgenossen, to shift your gaze from Germany for just a moment
to take a critical look at the conditions in other countries. Riots, civil war, social strife, and
economic crises follow each other in uninterrupted sequence. The torches of revolt are being
carried far and wide. Strikes and lockouts are eating up millions of the people's assets, but the
misery remains great nearly everywhere. In Germany, we have overcome all of that.

Yet not because a few economists put their factories back in operation, but because the
Volksgemeinschaft created by National Socialism abolished this political and economic
madness, thus securing orders for the factories and an income for workers and entrepreneurs.

224

Adolf Hitler - speech at the Biirgerbraukeller

Munich, November 8, 1934

/ 7ft he significance of November 8 and 9, 1923 lies for us in the fact that this
I Movement proved its inner toughness and resilience back then. If Fate were ever
^^Kto impose a similar burden upon us, we can recall the day when we believed to
have already grasped hold of power only to find ourselves in prison a few hours later; the day
when we were confident of having demonstrated our quickwittedness only to wake up the
next morning empty-handed. How did it happen that we were nevertheless able to overcome
this catastrophe? Back then, the Movement carried out its historic order, and there is only one
thing left to say to today's know-it-alls: either none of you has ever read Clausewitz, or if you
have, you have not understood how to apply him to the present.

Clausewitz writes that reconstruction is possible even after a heroic collapse.

Only cowards abandon their own cause, and that continues to take effect and spread like
an insidious drop of poison. And then the realization dawns that it is still better, if necessary,
to accept a horrible but sudden end than to bear horrors without end.

And then the time came when talk was not enough. For once, action had to be taken. For
ultimately, only action can force men under its spell.

We had to act in the year 1923, because we were confronted at the time with the final
attempt of the separatists in Germany. Want was appalling; inflation had robbed the people of
all their worldly goods; hunger was rampant. The people could not count on a single
tomorrow. Anyone who hoisted a flag was sure of a following. There were many people who
simply said: it makes no difference who takes action. The main thing is that someone has the
courage to do something. If another had had the courage to take action, the Volk would have
followed him. It would have said: it's a good thing that someone is taking the risk.

Had the men we were faced with taken action, utmost danger would have been
imminent. Others would have taken action on November 12, 1923 along the lines of the
maxim we heard preached so often back then, namely: Northern Germany will become
Bolshevist in any case, so we need to secede! We must have the North gutted! Only when that
has been done can we later unite with it once again! Of course they knew how to divide. But
how one would ever be able to reunite-that was the least of these gentlemen's worries.

And for that reason we were resolved back then to act first. We did not intend to stage a
coup. But I had made one decision: if the opposition goes so far that I know that they will
strike, I will strike four days earlier. And if people say to me, "Yes, but think of the
consequences!" my reply is, "The consequences could never have been worse than if no
action had been taken."

We have but a single pain, that not all of those can be here who marched with us back
then, that-tragically-a number of our very best, most loyal and most zealous fighters have not
lived to see the goal for which they fought.

However, they too are present in spirit in our ranks, and in eternity they will know that
their fight was not in vain.

225

The blood which they shed has become the baptismal water of the Third Reich. And
thus let us look back in this new Reich upon that which lies behind us and do so in the most
distant future, too, and let us bear in mind one article of faith: We shall be resolved at all
times to take action! Willing at all times, if necessary, to die! Never willing to capitulate!

226

Adolf Hitler - speech at Feldherrnhalle

Munich, Nevember 9, 1934

eeply stirred, we stand again here today on this square. It is a reminder of our
Movement's first dead, and it is a symbolic act that the swearing-in of the Party's
recruits takes place on this square.

This square of death thus becomes a place for swearing oaths in life. And we could
conduct no fairer commemoration celebration at this site at which our comrades once gave
their lives than the swearing-in of those who once again dedicate themselves to their work as
the youth of Germany.

You shall, I know, be just as loyal, just as brave as our old comrades! And you will have
to be fighters! For there are still many, many opponents of our Movement in Germany. They
do not want Germany to be strong. They do not want our Volk to be united. They do not want
our Volk to defend its honor.

They do not want our Volk to be free.

They might not want it, but we want it, and our will will defeat them! And your will
shall be with us, and you shall contribute to preserving and immortalizing the will of that
earlier time. We shall make even these last few bend under this will.

We shall ensure that the times which once required these sacrifices will never again,
within human power, return in Germany! Today the Party is by no means at the end of its
mission, but at the very beginning! It is now in its youth. And thus you, my German youth,
are not entering something foreign; rather, youth is joining the Movement of youth, and this
movement of youth thus welcomes you as one of its own. You have the task of doing your
share to fulfill what your elders once hoped for.

I am confident in you, confident that you who have already grown up and come into
being in the spirit of the new Germany will fulfill this task, and that you will bear in mind our
old principle: that it is not important that a single one of us lives, but vital that Germany lives !

227

Adolf Hitler - "New Year 's Proclamation to the National Socialists

and Party Comrades "

<7frhe great reformatory work on the Volk and the Reich will go on. The battle against
VLUinemployment and social distress will go on.

The enemies and dreamers who have again begun to believe themselves capable of
tearing the National Socialist German Volk and the German Reich asunder and overthrowing
the regime they so despise by a flood of written lies and accusations will, in twelve months'
time, be likewise disproved by harsh reality as was the case in the year now lying behind us.

Every attempt to do damage to Germany will ultimately be rendered unsuccessful by the
discipline and loyalty of the National Socialist Party and its adherents as well as by the
unshakeable will and perseverance of its leadership.

Yet our most fervent wish for this year 1935 is the return of that German territory which
shall proclaim on January 13 with the voice of blood to all the world its indissoluble affinity
with the German Reich.

Long live the National Socialist Movement!
Long live our united German Volk and German Reich!

Munich, January 1, 1935 Adolf Hitler

228

Adolf Hitler - speech on radio from the
Post Office at Berchtesgaden

January 15, 1935

Germans!

/ Ji n injustice which has existed for fifteen years is coming to an end! The suffering to
Jt \ which so many hundreds of thousands of Volksgenossen in the Saar have been
\T subjected during this time was a suffering shared by the German nation! The joy at
the return of our Volksgenossen is a joy shared by the entire German Reich. Fate willed that it
not be superior reason which would end this both pointless and regrettable situation, but a
section in a treaty which promised to bring peace to the world and led instead only to endless
suffering and constant discord.

Our pride is therefore all the greater that, after fifteen years of violating the voice of the
blood, it has now, on January 13, 1935, made its most powerful profession of faith! There is
one thing we all know, my dear Volksgenossen of the Saar: the fact that today, in a few hours,
the bells will ring throughout the German Reich as an outward expression of the proud joy
which fills us, is something we owe to you Germans in the Saar, to your sheerly unshakeable
loyalty, to your selfsacrificing patience and persistence, and to your bravery.

Neither force nor temptation have made you waver in the faith that you are Germans,
just as you have always been, and as we all are now and will remain! Hence I may extend to
you as the Fuhrer of the German Volk and Chancellor of the Reich, in the name of all
Germans whose spokesman I am at this moment, the gratitude of the nation, and may assure
you how happy we are at this hour that you are once again united with us as sons of our Volk
and citizens of the new German Reich.

It is a proud feeling to be chosen by Providence as the representative of a nation. In the
next few days and weeks, you, my Germans of the Saar, will be the representatives of the
German Volk and the German Reich. I know that you will not forget in the coming weeks of
joy over the victory-just as you did not forget in the past under the most difficult
circumstances-that there are those whose most fervent desire it is to find fault in your return to
the great homeland, even after the event. You must therefore continue to maintain the strictest
discipline! The German Volk will be all the more grateful to you because you have taken
upon yourselves a decision that will remove tensions in Europe which have weighed most
heavily: for all of us wish to perceive in this act of January 13 an initial and decisive step
toward a gradual reconciliation among those who, twenty years ago, stumbled into the most
horrible and least fruitful battles of all time, victims of fate and human fallibility. Your
decision, my dear German Volksgenossen of the Saar, today makes it possible for me to
submit a declaration, as our selfless, historic contribution to the pacification of Europe which
is so vital: when your reintegration has been effected, the German Reich will place no more
territorial demands upon France! I believe that, in doing this, we are also expressing to the
other powers our appreciation for faithfully scheduling this plebiscite in cooperation with
France and ourselves and for making it possible that it subsequently be carried out.

It is our unanimous wish that this German end to such a tragic injustice will contribute
to a greater pacification between the peoples of Europe. For just as our determination to gain

229

and ensure equality of rights for Germany is great and absolute, our resolve not to evade those
tasks which are a necessary part of bringing about genuine solidarity among the nations in the
face of today's perils and crises is equally great.

You, my German Volksgenossen of the Saar, have made a significant contribution to
increasing the awareness of the indissoluble community of our Volk and of the inward and
outward value of the German nation and today's Reich. Germany thanks you for this from
millions of overflowing hearts.

Welcome to our dear, shared homeland, to our united German Reich!

230

Adolf Hitler - interview at the Obersalzberg to the American journalist

Pierre Huss

January 16, 1935

/Question: Herr Reichskanzler, what is your opinion of the outcome of the Saar
^v plebiscite?

Answer: The results of the plebiscite fill me-and every single one of my staff-with
infinite pride in the German Volk. At the same time, this is a subsequent condemnation of the
Peace Treaty of Versailles of truly historic dimensions. For in this Treaty, this region was torn
from Germany on the grounds that 150,000 French lived there. After a fifteen-year rule of the
League of Nations and thus ultimately of France, it has now been ascertained that not
150,000, but a scant 2,000 French reside in this region, i.e. not even four French per 1,000
inhabitants of the Saar. How can anyone be surprised no good can come of a treaty based
upon such incorrect assumptions?

Question: Will the Social Democrats or Communists in the Saar and other non- National
Socialist inhabitants of tbis territory who have cast their ballots for Germany have anything to
fear in thefuture due to tbeir former political leanings?

Answer: Sixteen years ago, I began my struggle for Germany with six men; that means
my struggle for the German Volk. The number of my followers, towit, the followers of the
National Socialist Movement of the new State, has risen to nearly thirty-nine million since
then. Do you think that all these people did not belong to some other party before? No, at one
time they were all part of some movement or another.

They have been won over to the National Socialist idea with labor and with time. And
we will not give up this struggle for the soul of our Volk now.

Therefore, we never ask what an individual was in the past, but what he wants to be
today. This is how we have succeeded in dissolving the feuding German parties and formed a
true Volksgemeinschaft in which former Communists and adherents of the Center coexist,
joined in their mutual struggle for the National Socialist State, the new Reich. But a part of
this Reich is the Saar, and its inhabitants comprise a part of our Volk.

Question: Herr Reichskanzler, you have frequently stated that the last obstacle to
amicable relations with France would be removed when the Saar question was settled. In view
of your untiring, further pursuit of this goal in the interest of world peace, do you have a
specific plan in mind?

Answer: I have frequently stated that, after the return of the Saar to Germany, I would
place no further territorial demands on France. I have repeated this statement definitively
today before the whole world. In historical terms, it is a very difficult thing to renounce this as
I am doing in the name of the German Volk. But I am making this most difficult sacrifice in
order to contribute to the pacification of Europe. One cannot expect more from Germany. It is
now up to the rest of the world to draw the consequences of such a decision. Never shall I-and
never shall the new German Reich-consent to any limitations to the rights of our people. We
wish to be a peaceful Volk, but under no circumstances without honor.

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We are willing to make a very big sacrifice, but never to renounce our freedom. We
reject any differentiation between moral equality and factual equality: there is but one equality
of rights, and that is the right of a sovereign state and a sovereign nation. If the world
recognizes this, there is no need for grandiose plans to fortify peace in Europe.

Question: Herr Reichskanzler, do you now, after your great success in the Saar
plebiscite, have anything to say which might be of particular interest to the American people?

Answer: I have but one request to address to the American people. For years now and
in the past months, millions of American citizens will have been hearing and reading the
opposite of what has now been affirmed in this free and open ballot on the Saar. I would be
happy if this were to be taken cognizance of so that, in the future, no one will any longer
believe a word of what the professional international well-poisoners and rabble-rousers
among our emigrants say. Just as they lied about the Saar, they are lying about Germany and,
in doing so, practically lying to the whole world.

The American people should hear only eyewitness reports on Germany and, if possible,
personally come to Germany in order to see for themselves a State whose regime is today
supported by the overwhelming majority of the nation.

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Adolf Hitler - interview with Ward Price

January 17, 1935

/Question I: Under which conditions could Germany return to the League of Nations?

Answer: Neither I nor anyone else in Germany would even consider placing any
"conditions" on our possible return to the League of Nations. Whether or not we return to this
body depends exclusively upon whether we can belong to it as a completely equal nation.
This is not a "condition," but a matter of course.

Either we are a sovereign state, or we are not! As long as we are not, we have no
business in a community of sovereign states. As long as the National Socialist Movement is
leading Germany-and that will be the case for the next few centuries, no matter how often our
emigrants conjure up the opposite view- this opinion will not change.

Incidentally, I stated this explicitly in my May speech in 1933.19 1 would like to stress
that the German Volk feels that the differentiation between "moral" and "factual" equality is
an insult.

Whether or not sixty-eight million people are morally equal in this world or not is
ultimately something which can be decided by no one save the respective people itself.

Either one is factually equal, and consequently morally equal as well; on the other hand,
if one is morally equal, there is no reason why one should contest factual equality of rights or
simply refuse to grant them.

Question II: Will it be necessary to separate the general provisions of the League of
Nations from those of the Treaty of Versailles?

Answer: As long as the League of Nations constitutes only a treaty of guarantee for the
victorious nations, it is by no means worthy of its name. The fact that, with time, this League -
which was presumably designed by its founders to exist for all eternity-cannot be coupled
with a Treaty the short term of which is inherent in its own weaknesses and impracticabilities,
is a point which can perhaps be contested by today's interested parties, but which will one day
be deemed a matter of course in history.

Question III: Should the recognition of equality of rights be a precondition, or could
granting equality of rights and rejoining the League take place simultaneously?

Answer: German equality of rights is the prerequisite for any participation on
Germany's part in international conventions and agreements. I certainly am not alone in the
world with this demand; I am in the best of company. Let it be said that no self-respecting
people and no responsible government would be able to think or much less act differently in
such a case. The world has already seen a great many wars lost in the past.

If in the past, after every lost war, the unlucky vanquished were divested forever of their
honor and their equality of rights, the League of Nations would even now have to be satisfied
with a whole series of non-equal and thus ultimately dishonorable and inferior nations. For

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there is hardly a state or nation in existence which has not once had the misfortune, even if it
was in the right a thousand times over, to be defeated by a stronger opponent or a stronger
coalition.

Until now, this abominable absurdity has not yet been able to gain a foothold in the
world, and we are determined to ensure that Germany will not be the first to set an example
for the introduction of such an absurdity.

Question IV: Does Your Excellency not find that a reform of the League of Nations is
called for? What practical steps would this entail? Wbich arguments could be used to obtain
public support?

Answer: Since we are not in the League of Nations in any case, we do not devote our
attention to reflecting on its internal reforms.

Question V: Recently I spoke with a high-ranking political personage in France.

I asked him the following: Why does France choose not to recognize the fait accompli
of the restoration of German arms? We English always hold that it is more sensible not to
ignore such facts.

The politician replied to me: Yes, we believe that Germany will uphold a policy of
reconciliation only until the Reichswehr judges itself capable of successfully waging a war. In
France, there is fear that the overtures to the French associations of front-line soldiers are only
a camouflage to conceal aggressive future intentions.

What is Your Excellency's reply to this fear?

Answer: That politician has never led a people. Otherwise how could he believe that
one can talk about peace for a decade and then suddenly, with the same people, simply start a
war without further ado? When I talk about peace, I am expressing none other than the
innermost desire of the German Volk. I know the horrors of war: no gains can compensate for
the losses it brings. The disastrous consequences of widespread European butchery in the
future would be even worse. I believe that the madness of Communism would be the sole
victor. But I have not fought this for fifteen years to elevate it finally to the throne by way of a
detour. What I want is the well-being of my Volk! I have seen that war is not the highest form
of bliss, but the contrary: I have witnessed only the deepest suffering. Hence I can quite
frankly state two of my beliefs:

1 . Germany will never break the peace of its own accord, and

2. He who would lay hands upon us will encounter thorns and barbs! For we love liberty
just as we love peace.

And if, without being compelled to do so, I submit to France on behalf of the entire
German Volk the pledge that we will place no further territorial demands upon it and thus of
our own accord eliminate any grounds for revenge, at the same time I pledge an equally
sacred vow that no measure of need, pressure or violence will ever move us to relinquish our
honor or our equality of rights.

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I hold that this must be said, for treaties only make sense when concluded by honor-
loving peoples and honor-conscious governments. Germany wishes to establish honest
relations with the peoples of neighboring countries. We have done this in the East, and I
believe that not only Berlin but Warsaw as well will rejoice in the decontamination of the
atmosphere brought about through our joint efforts. I hold to my conviction that, once this
path of mutual understanding and consideration has been taken, more will come of it in the
end than through ever so extensive pacts inherently lacking in clarity.

In any case, I will reflect a thousand times over before I allow the German Volk to
become entangled in agreements whose consequences are not readily evident. If, on our own
account, we do not intend to wage war, we are much less willing to do so for interests which
do not concern Germany and are alien to it.

I may add that we have more than once stated our willingness to conclude
nonaggression pacts with the states neighboring our own!

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Adolf Hitler - address to the Reichstag

To the German Volk!

wo years ago, on this day and at this very hour, National Socialism gained power
and thus the responsibility in the German Reich, following a drive unequaled even
in the history of parliamentary government.

Just as, not only in the recollections of living witnesses but for coming generations as
well, the outbreak of the World War represents an historic transition, so does the accession of
National Socialism represent such a transition for our German Volk.

It has put back on its feet a nation wasting away in dull despair and instilled in it a
strong, believing faith in the inner worth and creative power of its own life.

And this is its greatest and most significant merit. The transition of the external symbols
corresponded to the change in the people themselves! In joyful self-discipline, countless
millions of our Volk have placed themselves at the service of the new idea. The soldiers of the
Wehrmacht so rich in tradition took their places beside the zealous fighters of our
revolutionary National Socialist Party. There came to be a mobilization of human forces of
hitherto scarcely conceivable dimensions. From the throngs of millions of our youth up to the
gigantic community of the mental and manual workers (Arbeiter der Stirn und Faust) united
in a single front, we see the evidence of the National Socialist art of organization and work of
organization.

The old world was not first destroyed to build the new; the new world on the rise has
surpassed the old.

Not for a single second did a break interrupt our National Socialist Revolution. At no
stage of our advance and our battles did chaos reign. It was the least bloody revolution in
world history, but nevertheless one of its most farreaching! Thus the attempt to try to deny or
falsify the character of our National Socialist Revolution by means of an international
campaign of agitation and lies was ultimately futile.

Hundreds of thousands of men and women of all nations who have been placed, in the
past two years, in a position to judge Germany with their own eyes have become witnesses to
the greatness and discipline of the National Socialist uprising. And they remain the best
witnesses to our work of reconstruction.

On January 30, 1933, I asked the German Volk for four years' time to implement the
first labor program, and now, in merely half that time, more than two thirds of what was
promised has been delivered! Hence no democratic government in the world can submit itself
with greater trust and greater confidence to the will of its people than the National Socialist
Government of Germany! We did not carry out the revolution for the sake of a revolution;
rather, our will to rebuild a new German Reich required the elimination of the old powers
weighing it down. The overwhelming majority of all our former adversaries has long since
apologized to us in their innermost heart of hearts.

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What we have always hoped for has come to pass. They subjected our intentions and
our work to a just examination and ultimately found in us and through us the fulfillment of
everything they had not otherwise yearned for in the depths of their hearts: a Germany of
honor, freedom and social good fortune. And if, this year, we are not commemorating this day
with large-scale festivities, it is because of the feeling of sorrow which overcomes us in view
of the death this past year of the man who, two years ago, entrusted to me and hence to the
National Socialist Movement the leadership of Germany. Stirred most deeply, we are all
mindful of the fate which led our Movement from the past to the future in so symbolic a
fashion.

Furthermore, the greatest celebration of this year should not be a celebration
commemorating the takeover of power, but a celebration of joy on the day the Germans of the
Saar return. They will encounter a Volk worthy of them and a Reich in which it is once more
a thing of good fortune for a German to live. They will encounter a Volksgemeinschaft in
which innumerable millions of people, from the National Socialist fighter to the soldier, from
the worker to the civil servant, are working together in true comradeship to honestly fulfill
their duties in the reconstruction of a state and the education of a nation whose wish it is to be
full of honor, peaceful and industrious in this world.

Berlin, January 30, 1935 Adolf Hitler

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Adolf Hitler - speech in Saarbriicken

March 1, 1935

German Volksgenossen!

/ IJ^'wo years ago, in 1933, 1 spoke for the first time before many tens of thousands of
I Saarlanders at the Niederwald Monuments At that time, in the midst of one of the
^^Wnost difficult battles to establish our ideas and principles in the new Germany, I
was filled by anxious concern for the future of the Saar.

One year later I was already facing hundreds of thousands in Koblenz. si Once more I
was moved-as were you all-by a deep-felt concern for the future of this territory which had
been torn from the Reich. At that time, we mutually pledged two things: You promised me
that, when the hour should come, you would stand up, man for man and woman for woman, in
support of Germany.

You have kept your vow. I promised you that Germany would not desert you, never and
nevermore, and Germany reciprocated and kept its promise; both times I was able to assure
you with all my heart that I would be happy the day I would be able to reward you for coming
to Koblenz.

At that time I promised that I would come to you in the initial hours of your freedom,
and now I am happy to be here in your midst. It is my belief that we can all thank Heaven for
having made possible that our third encounter does not find you as guests in the Reich, but
that I am now able to come to you in your homeland, in our German Saarland, as Chancellor
of the Reich and as your Fuhrer. It is the latest possible date the international bodies could
schedule for a rally in this territory. And I believe that is why the sky is overcast and is letting
rain fall. We have not been deterred by this rain, for even if the sky is shedding tears, today
we have had the sun in our hearts.

We are all so overjoyed to be able to take part in this happy day. This very minute
countless millions of Germans are listening throughout the Reich. A happy day for the entire
nation. From here to Hamburg, from Western Germany to Konigsberg-everywhere the same
sentiment: finally, finally you are back with us. But it is not only a happy day for Germany; I
believe it is also a happy day for the whole of Europe. It was a hallowed decision to finally fix
this day and to respect its outcome. To restore this territory, which so easily could have
become a permanent bone of contention, to the German Reich, whence it had been torn with
no right and no reason. A happy day for Europe particularly because this return of the Saar
might perhaps best serve to remedy the crisis from which two great nations are suffering
most. We hope that by virtue of this act of conciliatory justice reinstating common sense, we
hope that by virtue of this act the relations between Germany and France will improve once
and for all.

Just as we desire peace, so must we hope that our great neighboring people is also ready
and willing to seek with us this peace. It must be possible for two great peoples to join hands
to combat by mutual effort the crises which threaten to bury Europe beneath their weight.

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And this day shall also be a lesson, a lesson to all those who, ignorant of an everlasting
historic truth, delude themselves that terror or violence could strip a Volk of its innermost
character; a lesson to those who imagine they could tear away a part of a nation to steal its
very soul. May all statesmen draw one conclusion from this: that it is useless to attempt to tear
asunder peoples and nations by such methods. In the end, blood is stronger than any
documents of mere paper.

What ink has written will one day be blotted out by blood. This most profound voice,
ringing loud and clear, will ultimately drown out every other sound. Woe to him who refuses
to learn in the face of this certitude. He will bring distress and troubles upon mankind without
achieving his goal. He will bring suffering and misery upon the peoples for a time, but in the
end he will sustain a humiliating defeat.

Through this solemn plebiscite and this demonstration of belief in the Reich, you have
rendered yet another great historic service. In a hard phase of the struggle to rebuild the
German Reich, you have made my own work easier with this belief.52 As God is my witness:
this work has no other aim than to make Germany free and happy once more.

You have thus earned great credit and with it, a sacred right to celebrate this day of joy.
And I am happy to be allowed to pass this day in your midst.

May we today surrender to the embrace of happiness and joy, and tomorrow we shall
return to work, to the great task of working for our new German Reich.

For we know that, whatever has been accomplished, and be it oh so wondrous, it is only
a start, only the beginning of what we envision. You are not entering a finished building; you
are entering a community of people which has just now been joined together. You shall help
build and help work, and you shall be proud, you shall be happy that you were able and
allowed to work together on the new German structure. It is a wonderful thing to turn the
word Volksgemeinschaft into a reality. We shall now accomplish what many centuries past
have vainly yearned for.

We first had to meet up with misery to make our Volk ready for this idea. Sometimes
we are overcome by the feeling that everything which has happened is part of an unavoidable
fate destined to lead us to where happier days unfortunately could not have brought us; the
feeling that the hand of the Lord had to strike us to make us ready for this, the greatest inner
good fortune there is, the good fortune of mutual understanding within one's own people.

What is external glory, what are external advantages in comparison to this greatest of
possessions a Volk can acquire? We would be unable to understand the world, and the world
would not comprehend us-if we did not first learn to understand each other.

That is the first step to a better future for mankind. We have earnestly pursued this
route, endeavoring to rip from our inner depths vanity, class madness, and the arrogance of
rank. We have endeavored to judge people on the basis of their inner worth, endeavored to
depart from the mere appearance, from the superficial, endeavored to forget origin, rank,
profession, wealth, education, knowledge, capital, and all those things which separate people
from one another, in order to penetrate to what can join them together. To penetrate to the
heart, to the character, to the conscience, to decency-and we have been rewarded. We have
found rich treasures. We have been able to discover what we had not seen for centuries: the

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German Volksgenosse in every class of our Volk, in every rank of our Volk, in every
profession. To rightfully address people of the highest value as "Genossen" of a Volk.

And it is as a witness on behalf of this community that I have come here to you, as a
witness and as a fighter in this community which today joins together the millions who are
Germans.

I know that Heaven does not bestow perfection upon men. Their lot is to earn all, hard
and painfully. And I know that today this great goal is far from being achieved in full. But we
strive for it with burning hearts, and Heaven and Providence have blessed our efforts. For
there is one thing I can surely say: may my opponents at home and the opponents of the
German Volk everywhere bear one thing in mind: fifteen years ago I began my struggle for
Germany with a handful of people, and it was difficult to spread beyond this handful, to
spread into the environment, out into a city, out into a Land, out of a Land and into the
German Reich. Fifteen years of struggle, and when I take stock of the result today, I must
thank Heaven, for it blessed the struggle and blessed it again and again. The struggle has not
been in vain. Fifteen years of struggling for a Volk, fifteen years of fighting for a Reich, and
today I am able to welcome you in the German homeland on behalf of this Volk and on behalf
of this Reich.

I have come to you today, but this shall be only the first of many visits. I shall return,
and I shall speak to you again.

But now I could wait no longer. It would have been impossible for me to have spent
today sitting in Berlin or somewhere else, impossible.^ to pass this day in inner turmoil and
impatience.

I have come because my heart has led me here to you to tell you how infinitely happy
the German Volk is and how happy I myself am.

I shall return and then-I hope-speak to you many times over.54lt is a wondrous evolution
this Movement has made. A truly unique rise from the smallest beginning to such a large
following. This evolution gives all of us the confidence that the undertaking will be
completed, that we will not only envision the great aim, but perhaps even live to see it
materialize. You are now invited to take part in this work. I ask you to give to the new Reich
the virtues you have retained these fifteen years. For fifteen years you kept the faith. I beseech
you: keep the faith in the new Reich, too; believe in its future, believe in the task and in its
accomplishment, believe in the success of this task, believe in the freedom, believe in the
greatness and permanence of our Volk.

If you had not had faith as your support during these fifteen years, what would you have
left? If you had not had faith during these fifteen years, who would have been your leader?
Faith can move mountains; faith can also free peoples. Faith can fortify nations and lead them
to rise again, however humiliated they may have been.

And you have remained loyal for fifteen years. And once more I ask of you: place this
loyalty in the new Reich! You were loyal, regardless of what you were offered; you were
loyal, regardless of what you were promised. You did not weigh the material advantages. And
so I ask of you: be just as loyal in the work you are taking on, be loyal in this new Reich, be
loyal to this Movement, loyal to this German Volksgemeinschaft, never be distracted by what

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those outside our ranks promise us, never forget: We were just as loyal when Germany was at
its worst; it was then we hoisted the flag. When Germany was most deeply humiliated, it was
then we unfurled the flag of faith, the flag of commitment to this Germany. We did not say:
we are ashamed of being Germans; we said: we are prouder than ever to be Germans.

And we have never asked what else we might be offered, have never weighed what we
were actually offered; we believed in Germany, and we remained loyal to it every hour of the
day, in every crisis, in every danger, through all the wretchedness and through all the misery.
And I ask you to give this loyalty to the new Germany, your Germany, our Germany.

And I ask you too to give this Germany your will. What good is a man who does not
establish a goal which he pursues with zealousness and determination? The will is a
tremendous force when used persistently by someone persistently striving towards his goal. It
was your will to return to Germany, and your will has triumphed. It was our will to lead
Germany once again to the top, and as you see, our will has triumphed.

When Germany sank into the depths of humiliation, our will to establish the German
Volksgemeinschaft grew. When Germany split into classes and ranks, our will to overcome
them and make the nation ruler over its own life grew. And the will triumphed. Germany has
become one, a new banner has gone up, and there, beneath the waving banner, march the
millions in step; there marches the entire German nation. % I ask you to transpose the will of
the last fifteen years, the will that inspired you, now fresh and alive, onto the new Reich and
enter into it with the one great resolution of serving it. Enter with the resolve to subordinate
yourselves to this Reich and to place yourselves at its disposal.

If you thus enter our Reich, the Reich we have all built together, the Reich which is ours
because no one gave it to us, for the German Volk itself created it; if you thus enter this
Reich, you will all be happy! Then you will be happy in knowing that you have not accepted a
gift but achieved something magnificent by your joint effort.

Happiness and good fortune are things you cannot be given. The utmost good fortune
which can be bestowed is the conviction of having accomplished something through one's
own effort. You will be as blessed with this good fortune as we all already are today, for we
are proud of the fact that we were the ones who designed and hoisted this flag fifteen years
ago, and by virtue of our work it today constitutes a symbol of mutuality everywhere
Germans are.

We are happy knowing that we were given nothing by others, 57 but have achieved all in
a thousand battles, in untiring work, by our diligence and our will, with our loyalty and with
our faith. And you will be just as happy in fifteen or twenty years, when Germany will be
completely free, when Germany, as a nation of peace but also as a nation of freedom and
honor, will once more supply its sons and its children with daily bread. You will be happy and
proud in knowing that you, too, have contributed to winning this wealth for our Volk.

Gathered here in this evening hour, we wish to look not only at the past but also gaze
into the future; we want not only to rejoice in our accomplishments, but to establish new goals
for the work which shall lie before us.

We shall turn our gaze from the past and fix it on the future of our Volk.

241

There we see the tasks to which we are assigned, and we are pleased, for we have no
desire to be a generation which simply takes what is given and which expects things to fall
into its lap; we would rather end our days with the feeling: we have met our obligations, we
have done our duty. That is the utmost good fortune.

When today we set our sights on the future, our goal appears to be this new Reich of a
more noble Volksgemeinschaft, this new Germany of a purer Volksgenossenschaft; ; our goal
appears to be this Germany which is as peaceloving as it should be strong and must be
honorable and true! And to this Germany, which we all see before us at this moment, we shall
now swear our oath. It is to this Germany we wish to devote ourselves in this solemn hour, it
is under its spell we wish to fall as long as we breathe, and we wish to confirm this oath
together now, man for man and woman for woman: To our Germany, our Volk and our Reich:

Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!

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Adolf Hitler - Proclamation to the German Folk

Berlin, March 16, 1935

To the German Volk!

len in November 1918 the German Volk-trusting in the guarantees of Wilson's
[Fourteen Points-laid down their arms after four and a half years of valiant
resistance in a war they had never wanted, they believed they were doing a
service not only to tormented mankind, but to a great idea in and of itself

Having suffered the most from the consequences of this insane fight, the millions
comprising our Volk faithfully reached out for the concept of restructuring the relations
between peoples, which was to be consummated by abolishing, on the one hand, the secrets of
diplomatic cabinet politics and, on the other, the instruments of horror themselves. Many
Germans thus viewed the harshest consequences of defeat in history as an avoidable sacrifice
in the interest of ridding the world once and for all of similar horrors.

The concept of the League of Nations awakened perhaps in no other nation more fervent
support than in the German nation, so forsaken of all earthly possessions. This alone explains
the fact that the-to some extent patently absurd-conditions which destroyed all prerequisites
for and any possibility of defense were not only accepted by the German Volk but also
fulfilled by it.

The German Volk and especially its respective governments at the time were convinced
that compliance with the disarmament provisions stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles in
accordance with the auspices of this Treaty would lead to and guarantee the start of a general
international reduction in arms.

Only such bilateral accomplishment of the purpose of the Treaty could morally and
rationally justify a demand which, unilaterally imposed and carried through, would
necessarily have resulted in the perpetual discrimination and thus a certification of the
inferiority of a great nation.

Hence such a peace treaty could never have constituted the basis for any genuine inner
reconciliation between peoples and a pacification of the world thus brought about, but a basis
only for the growth of an ever-gnawing hate.

Germany has fulfilled the obligations imposed upon it to disarm, as verified by the
Allied Control Commission.

The work of destroying the German armies and their resources as verified by this
Commission was as follows:

a) The Army: 59,897 guns and barrels; 130,558 machine guns; 31,470 trench mortars
and barrels; 6,007,000 rifles and carbines; 243,937 MG barrels; 28,001 gun carriages; 4,390
trench mortar carriages; 38,750,000 shells; 16,550,000 hand grenades and rifle grenades;
60,400,000 live fuzes; 491,000,000 pieces of handgun ammunition; 335,000 tons of shell
cases; 23,515 tons of cartridge cases; 37,600 tons of gunpowder; 79,500 ammunition gauges;

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212,000 telephone sets; 1,072 flamethrowers; 31 armored trains; 59 tanks; 1,762 observation
vehicles; 8,982 wireless stations; 1,240 field bakeries; 2,199 pontoons; 981.7 tons of
equipment for soldiers; 8,230,350 pieces of reserve equipment for soldiers; 7,300 pistols and
revolvers; 180 MG sledges; 21 mobile workshops; 12 anti-aircraft guns; 11 limbers; 64,000
steel helmets; 174,000 gas masks; 2,500 machines of the former war industry; 8,000 rifle
barrels.

b) The Air Force: 15,714 fighter planes and bombers; 27,757 aircraft engines.

c) The Navy: destroyed, scrapped, scuttled or surrendered Navy warship material: 26
capital ships; 4 armored ships; 4 battle cruisers; 19 light cruisers; 21 training ships and special
ships; 83 torpedo boats; 315 submarines.

The destruction of the following was also required: vehicles of all types, gas and in part
anti-gas defense equipment, propellants, explosives, searchlights, sighting devices, range
finders and sound rangers, optical devices of all types, tackle, narrow-gauge devices, field
printing presses, field messes, workshops, cut-and-thrust weapons, steel helmets, ammunition
transport wagons, normal and special machines of the war industry, clamping devices with
drawings, aircraft and airship hangars, etc.

After compliance with this Treaty, a feat unparalleled in history, the German Volk had
the right to expect that the other side also perform the obligations it had undertaken.

Bear in mind:

1. Germany had disarmed.

2. The Peace Treaty had explicitly required that Germany be disarmed as a precondition
for universal disarmament, i.e. this fact alleged that the existence of Germany's arms alone
constituted the reason for the armament of the other countries.

3. Both the governments and the parties of the German Volk were caught up at that time
in a conviction which concurred in every way with the pacifist and democratic ideals of the
League of Nations and its founders.

However, while Germany fulfilled its obligations as one party to the Treaty, the other
party to the Treaty failed to perform its obligation. And that means: the esteemed parties
thereto from the former victorious nations have unilaterally breached the Treaty of Versailles.

It was not enough that not a single reduction in arms was made which was in any way
comparable to the German destruction of weaponry; nay; there was not even a moratorium on
arms production, but the opposite: the arms of a whole series of nations finally came to light.
The new machines of destruction which had been invented during the War were now
perfected in peacetime, in methodical and scientific work. In the field of developing powerful
land tanks as well as new fighting and bombing machines, constant and terrible improvements
were made. Huge new guns were built and new high-explosive bombs, incendiary bombs and
gas bombs were developed.

Since then the world has once again been reverberating to the sound of battle cries, as
though there had never been a World War and a Treaty of Versailles had never been

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concluded. In the midst of these highly-armed nations of war, ever better-equipped with the
most modern motorized forces, Germany was a vacuum where power was concerned,
completely at the mercy of any threat and any danger which any of them might pose.

The German Volk recalls the misfortune and suffering of fifteen years of economical
impoverishment, and political and moral humiliation. Hence it was understandable when
Germany began to raise its voice to urge that the promise of the other states to disarm be kept.
For one thing is clear: not only could the world endure one hundred years of peace; it would
view it as an immense blessing. One hundred years of being torn apart as victor and
vanquished is something it cannot, however, endure.

This feeling on the moral justification and necessity of international disarmament
prevailed not only in Germany but also in many other nations.

At the urging of these powers, attempts were initiated to bring about a reduction in arms
by means of conferences and with it a general international alignment at a low level. This
resulted in the first proposals for international disarmament agreements, and of these, we
recall most vividly that made by MacDonald.78 Germany was willing to accept this plan and to
have it form a basis for agreements to come. It failed for lack of the other nations' support and
was finally abandoned. Due to the fact that, under such circumstances, the equality of rights
solemnly guaranteed to the German Volk and Reich in the statement of December 1932 did
not become a reality, the new German Reich Government saw itself, as protector of the honor
and the vital rights of the German Volk, in no position to continue participating in such
conferences or to remain part of the League of Nations.

However, even after withdrawing from Geneva, the German Government was
nonetheless willing not only to examine proposals made by other states, but also to submit its
own practical proposals. In doing so, it adopted the self-styled attitude of the other nations
that the creation of short-term armies is unsuitable for the purposes of an offensive attack and
thus was to be recommended for peaceful defense.

It was thus willing to transform the long-service Reichswehr into a shortservice army in
compliance with the wishes of the other nations. Its winter 1933/34 proposals were practical
and feasible. The fact of their rejection along with the definitive rejection of the similarly
construed Italian and English proposals was an indication, however, that the other parties to
the Treaty were no longer inclined to subsequently fulfill their respective obligations to
disarm in accordance with the Treaty.

Under these circumstances, the German Government felt compelled to take of its own
accord those steps necessary to ensure that an end be put to a situation which was both
unworthy and ultimately threatening and in which a great Volk and Reich were powerless and
defenseless. In doing so, it was following the same reasoning which Minister Baldwin
expressed so accurately in his last speech:

'A country which shows itself unwilling to make what necessary preparations are
requisite for its own defense will never have force, moral or material, in this world.' The
government of today's German Reich desires but a single moral and material force-that is the
force to preserve peace for the Reich and thereby for the whole of Europe as well.

It has therefore continued to do what was in its power to promote the cause of peace.

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1. Quite some time ago, it proposed the conclusion of non-aggression pacts to all of its
neighboring states.

2. It sought and reached a treaty arrangement with its eastern neighbor which, thanks to
the high degree of accommodating understanding, has, it hopes, once and for all mitigated the
threatening atmosphere which existed when it took power and will lead to a permanent
understanding and friendship between the two peoples.

3. It has finally given France its solemn pledge that Germany will not make or place any
further territorial demands upon France now that the Saar question has been settled. It
believes that it has thus created, in a form rarely matched in history and by making a difficult
political and material sacrifice, the basis for the termination of a dispute between two great
nations which has lasted centuries.

The German Government must, however, observe to its regret that a continuous increase
in arms has been taking place in the rest of the world for months. It sees in the creation of a
Soviet-Russian army consisting of 101 divisions, i.e. an allowed force of 960,000 in
peacetime, a factor which could not have been foreseen when the Treaty of Versailles was
concluded.

It views the acceleration of similar measures in other states as further evidence of the
rejection of the concept of disarmament formerly proclaimed.

The German Government by no means intends to make accusations against any
particular nation. However, it is compelled to note that, with the introduction of a two-year
term of service in France which has now become law, the ideas underlying the creation of
short-service defensive armies have been abandoned in favor of a long-term organization.

This constituted, however, one of the arguments for insisting that Germany abandon its
Reichswehr at the time.

The German Government feels that under these circumstances it is impossible to delay
any longer the measures required for the security of the Reich or indeed to refuse to inform its
environment of these measures.

In now complying with the wish the British Minister, Baldwin, made on November 28,
1934, that light be shed upon Germany's intentions, it is doing so:

1 . in order to give the German Volk the conviction and the other states notice that the
preservation and security of the German Reich is once again entrusted from now on to the
German nation's own strength;

2. that, by establishing the limits of the German measures, it will invalidate allegations
charging that the German Volk is striving for military hegemony in Europe.

What the German Government desires, as protector of the honor and the interests of the
German nation, is to secure the measure of power essential not only for upholding the
integrity of the German Reich but also for Germany's international respect and esteem as a
co-guarantor of general peace.

246

For in this very hour, the German Government renews its resolve before the German
Volk and before the entire world that it will never step beyond the bounds of preserving
German honor and the freedom of the Reich and in particular shall never make of the German
national arms an instrument of warlike aggression, but an instrument confined exclusively to
defense and thereby to the preservation of peace.

The German Reich Government is confident in its hope that the German Volk, once
more restored to its honor and enjoying independent equality of rights, may be granted the
opportunity to make its contribution to the pacification of the world in unrestrained and
straightforward cooperation with the other nations and their governments.

Bearing this in mind, the German Reich Government has passed the following law as
per today's date, which is hereby promulgated: Law on the Establishment of the Wehrmacht
of March 16, 1935

§ 1. Service in the Wehrmacht shall be effected on the basis of general conscription.

§ 2. The German peacetime army, inclusive of the transferred troop-police,so is
comprised of twelve corps and thirty-six divisions.

§ 3. The supplementary laws on the details of general compulsory military service shall
be submitted by the Reich Minister of Defense to the Reich Ministry of Defense.

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Adolf Hitler - speech at the Tempelhofer Feld

Berlin, May 1, 1935

German Volksgenossen!

le first of May-in days of yore the German Spring holiday. And another first of
May-a day of strife and discontent, a day of our Volk being torn asunder in
Classes. And yet another first of May-the day marking the springtime of the
nation! The day of the solidarity of a Volk in its work! A great age has thus dawned once
again for Germany. We say this knowing that the greatness of an age lies in the greatness of
the tasks assigned to it and thereby to us. Great tasks, such as those vested in only few
generations in history.

Yesterday we were still a powerless Volk, for we were strife-torn, falling out and apart
in internal discord, fragmented into hundreds of parties and groups, leagues and associations,
Weltanschauungen and confessions-a Reich built upon this fragmented Volk, equally weak
and powerless, a mere plaything at the mercy of alien despotism! Small states deride it, small
states deprive it of its rights and gag the people of this Volk. The economy was in the throes
of death.

Disintegration and ruin at every turn. Every principle had been abandoned.

What had once seemed good became bad; what had been detestable was suddenly
venerable. What was once meant to and able to give life more meaning was now passed off
and perceived to be merely a burden to mankind. One author summed up the impressions of
this age in a book which he entitled, The Decline of the West.

Is this then really the end of our history and hence of our peoples? No! We cannot
believe or accept it! It must be called not the 'Decline of the West,' but the 'Resurrection of
the Peoples of the Western World' ! Only what has become old, rotten and bad dies. And it
should die! But new life will generate. The will shall find the faith. This will lies in
leadership, and faith lies in the people! But all must believe in one thing. He who would
tackle this great work of reorganization must begin with the Volk itself. First a new Volk, and
with it the new age! Great tasks have always been accomplished only by strong leaders; but
even the strongest leadership must fail if it does not have a faithful, inwardly steadfast and
truly strong Volk standing behind it.

It is mankind's misfortune that its leaders forget all too often that ultimate strength does
not lie anchored in divisions and regiments or in cannons and tanks; rather, the greatest
strength of any leadership lies in the people themselves, in their unanimity, in their inner unity
and in their idealistic faith.

That is the power which, in the end, can move the mountains of resistance! But this
requires a philosophy which the Volk understands, a philosophy which it comprehends and
which it loves.

When we first set forth in 1919 as preachers of the National Socialist philosophy, we
were a tiny little group of idealists or, as they said, dreamers, the object of ridicule. The critics

248

have been proven wrong today. Some of them might also have striven for what has happened
since, but they were incapable of bringing it about; in a historical sense, visible success is
ultimately decisive for the correctness of a principle. And this here is documentary proof of
this success which no one can forge: one Volk in one Reich! Everything we have achieved
would have been impossible; nothing we did could have been accomplished; there never
would have been a January 30th; never a 21st nor a 16th of March; the external success would
never have come about if the German Volk had not gone through an inner transition. The fact
that we were able to give the German Volk a new philosophy and to lead it to a new type of
life by means of this philosophy is the greatest feat of this century for our Volk. The greatest
achievement which will outlive by far everything which can be accomplished in day-to-day
work, thanks to this unique achievement.

And this united nation- we need it, for when was a leadership confronted with a more
difficult task than our German leadership? Bear in mind, my Volksgenossen, what our
Germany is, and compare it to other countries. How little we have! 137 people per square
kilometer, no colonies, no natural resources, no foreign currency, no capital, no foreign assets
left, only heavy burdens, sacrifices, taxes, and low wages. What do we have compared to the
wealth of other states, the wealth of other countries, the wealth of other peoples, the wealth of
possibilities they have? What do we have? Only one thing: we have our Volk! It is either all,
or it is nothing. Our Volk is the only thing on which we can depend. The only thing upon
which we can build. Everything we have accomplished to date we owe only to its quality, its
capabilities, its loyalty, its decency, its diligence, its sense of order. And when I weigh all of
that, then it appears to me to be more than everything the rest of the world has to offer us.

And that, I believe, is something we can well impart to other peoples on this first of
May: you need not fear that we will place demands on you. We are proud enough to confess
that the utmost- something you cannot give us-is something we have ourselves: our Volk.

As Fuhrer, I cannot conceive of any task on this earth more marvelous and glorious than
to serve this Volk. Were I given the gift of continents, I would still prefer being even the
poorest citizen of this Volk. And with this Volk it must and will be possible to accomplish the
tasks of the future as well.

And thus I ask of you: renew on this day of the greatest and most glorious
demonstration in the world your vow to your Volk, to our community and to our National
Socialist State. My will-and this must be the vow of each and every one of us-is your faith! To
me-as to you-my faith is everything I have in this world! But the greatest thing God has given
me in this world is my Volk! In it rests my faith. It I serve with my will, and to it I give my
life! May this be our mutual sacred vow on the day of German labor, which so rightfully is the
day of the German nation! To our working German Volk:

Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!

249

Adolf Hitler - speech at the Reichstag

Berlin, May 21, 1935

/ IJ^he German Reich Government will particularly abide by all of the obligations

I arising from the Locarno Pact as long as the other parties are willing for their part

^^Kto adhere to this Pact. The German Reich Government holds that respecting the

demilitarized zone constitutes an enormously important contribution to the appeasement of

Europe. It feels bound, however, to point out that the continued increase in troops on the other

side can by no means be viewed as a complement to these endeavors.

It is my belief that making this type of statement is particularly useful, for it not only
gives me the right but actually places me under obligation to be completely open and to speak
about the various problems with total frankness.

The German nation has the right to demand this of me, and I am determined to obey. I
frequently hear Anglo-Saxon countries express regret that Germany should have departed
from the very principles of a democratic concept of state which are particularly sacred to these
countries. This opinion is based upon a grave error. Germany also had a "democratic
constitution." The present German Government of the National Socialist State has also been
appointed by the people and feels itself responsible to the people in the same way. It does not
matter how high the number of votes in the individual Lander were. There are Lander which
require 20,000 votes for one deputy. In others, 10,000 or even 5,000 suffice; in still others, the
figure is 60,000 or more.

The German Volk elected a single deputy as its representative with thirtyeight million
votes! That is perhaps one of the most significant differences in comparison to the conditions
in the other countries. It means, however, that I feel just as responsible to the German Volk as
any parliament would.

The blood which has been shed on the European continent for the past three hundred
years bears no proportion whatsoever to the outcome of events in terms of nationalities. In the
end, France has remained France, Germany Germany, Poland Poland, Italy Italy, etc. What
dynastic egoism, political passion and patriotic blindness have attained by rivers of blood in
the way of seemingly far-reaching national and political changes served, in terms of the
nations, only to scratch the surface of peoples, doing very little to really alter their basic
parameters. Had these states devoted merely a fraction of their sacrifices to wiser aims, the
resultant success would certainly have been greater and more permanent.

When I, as a National Socialist, uphold this opinion in total frankness, I am moved by
yet another realization: every war initially devours the cream of the crop. But because there is
no more unoccupied space left in Europe, every victory-without effecting any change in the
fundamental European misfortune-can at best bring about a numerical increase in the
inhabitants of a given state. If, however, this means so much to the nations, they can
accomplish it in a much simpler and above all more natural way than by shedding tears. A
sound social policy can increase the willingness of a Volk to have offspring and thus, within
only a few years, give to a nation more children of its own Volk than the number of foreign
people who could be conquered and made subjects by war.

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No! National Socialist Germany wants peace out of its innermost weltanschaulich
convictions. It wants peace owing, too, to the simple and so basic realization that no war
would be capable of essentially alleviating our widespread European distress, but would more
likely increase it. Modern Germany is presently undertaking the enormous effort of repairing
its inner damages.

None of our projects of material nature will be completed before ten to twenty years
have passed. None of the tasks of an ideal nature which we have taken on can come to fruition
in less than fifty or perhaps even a hundred years.

Back then I started the National Socialist Revolution by creating the Movement and I
have actively carried on this revolution. I know that all of us will witness only the very
beginning of this great and sweeping development. What more could I want than peace? But
if they claim that this is the desire only of the leadership, I must respond with the following:
even if only the leaders and those in government wanted peace-the peoples themselves have
never wanted war! Germany needs peace, and it desires peace.

I have now heard from the lips of an English statesman that such assurances mean
nothing and that the only guarantee of sincerity is a signature on collective treaties, and I may
ask Minister Eden to take into consideration that it is, in any case, an 'assurance.' On occasion
it is much easier to sign one's name to a treaty, inwardly reserving the right to review one's
attitude in the decisive hour, than to declare-before an entire nation and completely out in the
open-one's support of a policy which serves the cause of peace because it rejects the
prerequisites of war.

I could have put my signature on ten treaties, and the weightiness of such an action
would not have had the same significance as the statement I made to France on the occasion
of the Saar plebiscite. When I, as Fuhrer and appointed representative of the German nation,
gave my assurance in front of the world and my Volk that Germany would make no further
territorial demands upon France after the question of the Saar had been settled, this
constituted a contribution to peace which is greater than many a signature on many a pact.

Yet even in the Friedensdiktat of Versailles it was expressly provided that Germany's
reduction in arms was to be effected first only in order to enable the others to reduce their
arms as well. And now this example may serve to illustrate the extent to which the concept of
collective cooperation was violated by those very parties who are today its most vociferous
advocates.

Germany performed the obligations imposed in the Treaty of Versailles with nothing
short of zealousness. Financially, up to the complete collapse of its finances; economically, up
to the total destruction of its economy; militarily, up to a complete lack of defenses. I may
repeat here in general terms the facts of Germany's performance of the treaties which are
contested by no one.

The following were destroyed in the Army:

1) 59,000 guns and barrels;

2) 130,000 machine guns;

3) 31,000 trench mortars and barrels;

4) 6,007,000 rifles and carbines;

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5) 243,000 MG barrels;

6) 28,000 gun carriages;

7) 4,390 trench mortar carriages;

8) 38,750,000 shells;

9) 16,550,000 hand grenades and rifle grenades;

10) 60,400,000 live fuzes;

11) 491,000,000 small arms ammunition;

12) 335,000 tons of shell cases;

13) 43,515 tons of cartridge cases;

14) 37,600 tons of gunpowder;

15) 79,000 ammunition gauges;

16) 212,000 telephone sets;

17) 1,072 flamethrowers, etc.

Further destroyed were: sledges, mobile workshops, anti-aircraft vehicles, limbers, steel
helmets, gas masks, machines of the former war industry, and rifle barrels.

Further destroyed in the air were:

1) 15,714 fighter planes and bombers;

2) 27,757 aircraft engines.

At sea, the following were destroyed: 26 capital ships, four coastal tanks, four battle
cruisers, 19 light cruisers, 21 training ships and special ships, 83 torpedo boats, and 315
submarines.

Also destroyed were motor vehicles of all types, chemical warfare and, in part, anti-gas
defense equipment, propellants, explosives, searchlights, sighting devices, range finders and
sound rangers, optical instruments of all kinds, harnesses, etc.; all airplane and airship
hangars, etc.

Hence in a genuine act of self-sacrifice, Germany fulfilled all of the conditions for
cooperation in a collective sense in keeping with the American President's thinking.

At the latest upon the consummation of Germany's disarmament, the world should, for
its part, have taken the same step toward establishing equality. It is merely one proof of the
accuracy of this view that there was no dearth of admonishing and warning voices in the other
peoples and in the other states who endorsed the performance of this duty. I wish to cite only
a few of these men- who certainly cannot be referred to as friends of today's Germany-in order
to refute, by their own statements, those who seem to he suffering from amnesia and cannot
recall that the Treaty of Versailles contained the contractual obligation not only for Germany
to disarm, but for the other states as well.

Lord Robert Cecil, Member of the British Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and
Head of the British Delegation to the Disarmament Conference (Revue de Paris, No. 5, 1924):

"The disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and the other peace treaties
commence with a preamble which reads as follows: In order to make possible the introduction
of general arms limitation for all nations, Germany undertakes to closely observe the
following provisions on armed forces on land, at sea and in the air. This preamble amounts to

252

an agreement. It constitutes the solemn promise of the governments to the democracies of all
those states which signed the peace treaties. If it is not kept, the system set up by the peace
treaties cannot be permanently upheld, and even partial disarmament will shortly cease to
exist."

Paul-Boncour on April 8, 1927 at the British Meeting of the League of Nations'
Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference:

"It is true that the preamble to Part V of the Treaty of Versailles concerns the
restrictions on arms which were imposed upon Germany as precondition and as precedent for
a general arms limitation. This very clearly distinguishes Germany's limitations on arms from
other comparable limitations on arms which have been imposed in the course of history at the
close of wars and which have incidentally in general proven rather ineffective. This time such
a condition-and only then does it take on its full value-has been imposed not only on the party
signing the treaty, but is moreover a duty, a moral and legal obligation of the co-signatories to
take steps towards the general limitation of arms."

Henderson's statement of January 20, 1931:

"We must persuade our parliaments and our peoples that all of the members of the
League of Nations are compelled to adopt this policy of general disarmament by solemn
obligations imposed upon us both by international law and by a sense of national honor. I
shall remind the Council that Article 8 of the Covenant, the preamble of Part V of the Treaty
of Versailles, the final act of the Pact of Locarno, and the resolutions passed every year since
1920 by the assembly demonstrate that all members of the League are subject to the same
responsibility in this sector. We have all assumed obligations, and if we do not perform them,
doubt can be shed upon our peaceful intentions. The influence and the reputation of the
League of Nations would suffer as a consequence."

Briand's statement of January 20, 1931:

"On behalf of my country, I may endorse the eloquent words with which our President
has opened the session. . . I believe as you do. I have had the opportunity to say this on
several occasions-that the obligations which the nations have contractually undertaken by
signing Article 8 of the Covenant of the League of Nations may not be allowed to remain but
lifeless words. They constitute a sacred commitment, and a country which would shirk this
would dishonor itself."

Remarks of the Belgian Foreign Minister Vandervelde, Member of the Belgian Peace
Delegation, on February 27, 1927:

"From now on we are faced with the following dilemma: either the other powers must
reduce their armies in proportion to the German Reichswehr or the Treaty of Versailles will
be rendered invalid and Germany will claim for itself the right to possess armed forces in
order to be in a position to defend the sovereignty of its territory. Two conclusions are to be
drawn from these facts: first, that all measures of control have little effect; secondly,
disarmament will either be general or not happen at all."

The same Foreign Minister on December 29, 1930 in the Populaire:

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"The Treaty of Versailles would be reduced to so many scraps of paper if the moral and
legal obligations of the Treaty which forced disarmament upon defeated Germany with the
aim of preparing for a reduction in arms by the others were not fulfilled."

Lord Robert Cecil in his radio speech of December 31, 1930:

"International arms reduction numbers among our more important national interests. We
have not only once, but many times over undertaken the obligation to reduce and limit the
arms of the nations which were victorious in the World War to supplement the reduction in
arms we imposed as a duty upon our former adversaries. We will destroy all faith in
international obligations if we do not carry out what we have promised. In my view it is of
secondary importance that we would know no answer were our former adversaries to
approach us with the demand to be allowed to rearm." And once again Paul-Boncour on April
26, 1930 in the Journal: "Finally, one does not have to be a prophet; it suffices to keep one's
eyes open to observe that, in the event of a definitive failure of the disarmament negotiations
or even only in the event of their continuing postponement, Germany-freed of other
constraints-will prepare to shake off this arms reduction and to no longer tolerate alone a
limitation of arms which the Treaty of Versailles itself describes as the precondition, but also
as the promise, of a general reduction in arms. We no longer have a choice."

One could pursue this topic indefinitely. Both we National Socialists and the
Bolshevists are of the conviction that worlds separate us, a gap never to be bridged. But
beyond that we are separated by more than 400 1 n murdered National Socialist Party comrades;
thousands of other National Socialists in other associations who were killed repelling
Bolshevist revolts; thousands of soldiers and police squads who were shot and massacred
fighting to protect the Reich and the Lander against the never-ending Communist uprisings;
and more than 43,000 injured in our Party alone. Thousands of them are partially blinded,
partially crippled for the rest of their days.

If I am not mistaken, I gather the impression from the last speech of the English Lord
Privy Seal that the Soviet Union has no interest at all in such tendencies-in particular
aggressive military tendencies. No one would be happier than we should this opinion prove
true in the future. The past, in any case, indicates the opposite. If I presume to contrast my
own impression with this finding, I am at least in a position to point out that the success of my
own life-struggle is not due exclusively to a particularly large measure of incompetence on
my part. I believe I do in fact understand some things here. I began my activities in Germany
at approximately the same time Bolshevism was celebrating its initial achievements, i.e. the
first civil war in Germany. When, after fifteen years, Bolshevism in our country had six
million followers, I had risen to thirteen million. Then, in the decisive battle, it lost. National
Socialism has ripped Germany and with it perhaps the whole of Europe back from the brink
of the most horrible catastrophe of all time.

They [the inhabitants of the Memel territory] are Germans; in an attack which was
subsequently sanctioned and took place in the midst of peace they were torn away from the
Reich, and as a penalty for continuing to be attached to German Volkstum, they are
persecuted, tortured and maltreated in the most barbaric way.

What would be said in England or in France if members of these nations were to meet
with such a sorry fate? When the feeling of belonging to a Volk which is harbored by people
torn away from such a Volk contrary to all law or natural sentiment is deemed a punishable

254

crime, then this means that people are being denied a right which is even granted to each and
every animal: the right to be attached to its old master and the old inborn community. But
140,000 Germans in Lithuania were actually confined to a position below these rights.

Thus we see no possibility-as long as the responsible guarantors of the Memel Statute
for their part are not in a position to lead Lithuania back to respecting the most primitive
human rights-of concluding for our part any treaties whatsoever with this State.

The German Reich Government will be particularly grateful to receive an authentic
interpretation of the repercussions and effects of the Franco-Russian military alliance on the
contractual obligations of the individual parties to the Pact of Locarno. It would like to rule
out any doubt on its own opinion, i.e. that it holds these military alliances to be incompatible
with the spirit and the letter of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in inner- Austrian affairs or to effect an
Austrian annexation or Anschluss. Born of a simple feeling of solidarity due to a common
national origin, the German Volk and the German Government have, however, the
understandable desire that not only alien peoples, but also the German Volk be guaranteed the
right of self-determi- nation everywhere. I personally believe that any regime which is not
anchored in the people, supported by the people and wanted by the people cannot endure for
any length of time. If such difficulties do not exist between Germany and Switzerland-itself to
a large percentage German as well-this is for the simple reason that Switzerland's
independence is a fact, and because no one doubts that its government represents the true and
legal manifestation of the will of the people. We Germans have, however, every reason to be
pleased that there is a state on our border with a large proportion of German inhabitants which
has a great degree of inner stability and is in possession of real and factual independence. The
German Government regrets the tension caused by the conflict with Austria all the more
because it has caused a disruption in our relations with Italy which were previously so good,
to a state with which we otherwise have no conflicts of interests whatsoever.

When I now proceed from these general remarks to fix my aim more closely on the
current problems at hand, I arrive at the following position of the German Reich Government:

1. The German Reich Government rejects the resolution passed in Geneva on April 17.
It was not Germany which unilaterally breached the Treaty of Versailles; the Diktat of
Versailles was unilaterally breached in regard to the points in question and thus rendered
invalid by those very powers which could not bring themselves to follow up the reduction in
arms required of Germany by one of their own as had been contractually stipulated. The new
discrimination of Germany added by virtue of the resolution in Geneva makes it impossible
for the German Reich Government to rejoin this institution unless the necessary foundation is
laid for a truly equal legal status.

For this purpose the German Reich Government considers it necessary to make a sharp
distinction between the Treaty of Versailles, which is based upon a division of the nations into
victors and vanquished, and the League of Nations, which must be based upon the equal
worth and equal rights of all its members.

This equality of rights must be a practicable equality and extend to include all of the
functions and property rights comprising international life.

255

2. As a consequence of the non-performance of the disarmament obligations on the part
of the other States, the German Reich Government has, for its part, renounced those articles
which, as a consequence of the one-sided burden now placed upon Germany in violation of
the Treaty, constitute an indefinite discrimination of the German nation. It hereby most
solemnly declares, however, that its respective action is confined to those points giving rise to
the moral and material discrimination of the German Volk as have been disclosed. The
German Reich Government shall thus unconditionally abide by the other articles governing
the coexistence of the nations, including territorial provisions, and put into effect solely by
means of peaceful understanding those amendments which become inevitable by virtue of the
changing times.

3. The German Reich Government does not intend to sign any treaty which it does not
feel able to fulfill. It will, however, scrupulously comply with every treaty signed voluntarily,
even if same was drawn up prior to its having taken office and coming to power. It will
particularly abide by and perform all of the obligations arising from the Locarno Pact as long
as the other parties are willing for their part to adhere to this Treaty. The German Reich
Government holds that respecting the demilitarized zone constitutes for a sovereign state an
enormously important contribution to the appeasement of Europe. It feels bound, however, to
point out that the continued increase in troops on the other side can by no means be viewed as
a complement to these endeavors.

4. The German Reich Government is willing at all times to participate in a system of
collective cooperation with the goal of safeguarding peace in Europe, but feels it would then
be necessary to do justice to the law of perpetual evolution by keeping amendments to the
treaty in reserve. It feels that a stipulation allowing such an evolution of the treaty would be
instrumental in safeguarding peace, while choking off any necessary change would amount to
bottling up the ingredients for ensuing explosions.

5. The German Reich Government is of the opinion that the goal of rebuilding European
cooperation cannot be achieved by means of foisting conditions upon one side. It believes that
it is only right to be content with a minimum, in view of the diversity of interests involved,
instead of allowing this cooperation to fail as a consequence of an unattainable maximum of
demands. It further holds the conviction that this understanding-with one great aim in view-
can only be achieved step by step.

6. The German Reich Government is basically willing to conclude pacts of non-
aggression with its respective neighboring states and to supplement these pacts by all such
provisions designed to isolate those who would wage war and to limit the center of war. It is
specifically willing to undertake any and all obligations which may thus arise to supply
materials and weapons in peace or in war which are undertaken and respected by all the
partners to the pact.

7. The German Reich Government is willing to consent to an air pact to supplement the
Pact of Locarno and to enter into talks with this aim.

8. The German Reich Government has disclosed the extent to which the new German
Wehrmacht will be built up. It will under no circumstances retreat from these parameters. It
does not regard the fulfillment of its program on land, in the air or at sea as constituting any
threat whatsoever to another nation. It is nonetheless willing at all times to perform those
limitations on its armament which are undertaken by the other states as well. The German

256

Reich Government has already announced certain limitations of its own regarding its
intentions. It has thus best illustrated its good will to avoid an unlimited arms race. Its
limitation on German air armaments at a level of parity with the other respective major
western nations makes it possible at any time to fix a maximum figure with which Germany
would then also be obliged to comply.

The limitation on the German Navy, amounting to thirty-five percent of the English
Navy, is still fifteen percent below the total tonnage of the French fleet. Due to the fact that
the opinion has been expressed in various commentaries in the press that this demand is only
the beginning and would be increased to include the possession of colonies, the German Reich
Government hereby makes the following binding declaration: for Germany, this demand is
final andlasting.

Germany has neither the intention, the need nor the means to enter into any kind of new
naval rivalry. The German Reich Government acknowledges of its own accord the paramount
importance of and thus the justification for a dominating protection of the British World
Empire at sea, just as we are conversely resolved to do all that is necessary to protect our own
continental existence and liberty. It is the sincere intention of the German Government to do
everything to find and maintain a relationship with the British people and the British State
which will rule out forever a repetition of the only battle thus far between the two nations.

9. The German Reich Government is willing to take an active part in all endeavors
which can lead to a practical limitation of boundless armaments. It views a return to the lines
of thinking at the former Geneva Red Cross Convention as the only possible way to achieve
this at present. It believes that, initially, it will be possible only to gradually abolish and
outlaw those weapons and methods of warfare which are at odds, by their most inherent
nature, with the Geneva Red Cross Convention already in force. It believes in this context
that, just as the use of dumdum bullets was once prohibited and thus, in broad terms,
practically put to a stop, the use of certain other weapons can also be prohibited and thus
practically put to a stop as well. It conceives of these as all such combat weapons which cause
death and destruction not primarily to soldiers in combat but rather to women and children not
directly involved in the fighting. The German Reich Government holds that the idea of doing
away with aircraft but allowing bombardment is wrong and ineffective. However, it does see
the possibility of instituting a global ban on the use of certain weapons as contravening
international law and ostracizing those nations which persist in making use of such weapons
from the realm of humanity and its rights and laws.

In this context as well it believes that a gradual process can most readily lead to success.
To sum it up: bans on dropping gas, incendiary and demolition bombs outside the real battle
zone.

This limitation could actually be extended until bombing were completely outlawed
worldwide. So long as bombing as such is permitted, any limitation on the number of
bombers is of questionable value in view of the possibility of quick replacements.

Should bombing as such be branded as a barbarity contravening international law, the
construction of bombers would soon become superfluous and pointless of its own accord. If it
was once possible by means of the Geneva Red Cross Convention to prevent, in a step-by-
step process, the killing of defenseless wounded soldiers and prisoners, then it must also be
possible, by an analogous convention, to prevent the bombing of equally defenseless civilian

257

population and ultimately to bring this to a complete halt. Germany believes that such a
comprehensive approach to this problem would mean a greater sense of ease and security for
the peoples than any number of mutual assistance pacts and military conventions.

10. The German Reich Government is willing to consent to any limitation which leads
to the abolishment of those heaviest weapons which are particularly suitable as weapons of
attack. These weapons include: first, the heaviest artillery and secondly, the heaviest tanks. In
view of the enormous fortifications along the French border, such an international
abolishment of the heaviest weapons of attack would automatically put France at least in
possession of a one-hundred-percent security.

11. Germany declares itself willing to consent to any limitation on the caliber of
artillery, battleships, cruisers, and torpedo boats. Similarly, the German Reich Government is
willing to accept any international limitation on the size of ships. And finally, the German
Reich Government is willing to consent to a limitation of submarine tonnage or to its
complete abolishment, should this be stipulated by international agreement.

Furthermore, it repeats its assurance that it will join any international limitation or ban
on arms going into effect concurrently.

12. The German Reich Government is of the opinion that all attempts to effectively ease
certain tensions between individual states in the form of international or multilateral
agreements must be to no avail until appropriate measures have been taken to prevent
irresponsible elements from poisoning the public opinion of the peoples by the written and
spoken word and in movies and the theater.

13. The German Reich Government is willing at all times to consent to an international
agreement which, by effective means, serves to prohibit and render impossible all attempts by
third parties to interfere in other states. It must, however, demand that such a settlement go
into force on an international scale and equally benefit all states. Due to the risk that domestic
uprisings within countries whose governments do not enjoy the general confidence of their
people may all too easily be ascribed by parties with respective interests to interference from
without, it would seem necessary to arrive at a precise international definition of the term
"interference." Deputies! Men of the German Reichstag! I have endeavored to give you an
idea of the thoughts which move us today. However great the specific concerns might be, I
believe that it is incompatible with my feeling of responsibility as Fuhrer of the nation and
Chancellor of the Reich to voice even a single doubt as to the possibility of preserving peace.
The peoples want peace. The governments must be able to maintain it! I believe that the
restoration of German military power will become a factor in this peace-not because we plan
to increase this power to some pointless magnitude, but because the simple fact of its
existence does away with a dangerous vacuum in Europe. Germany does not intend to
increase its armaments to an infinite degree, m We do not have 10,000 bombers and we will
not build 10,000 bombers; on the contrary: we have imposed upon ourselves the limitation
which guarantees, in our opinion, the protection of the nation without violating the concept of
the possibility of a collective security and a respective agreement. We would be most pleased
were such an agreement to afford us the opportunity to make use of the diligence of our Volk
for production processes more beneficial than those of manufacturing instruments for the
destruction of human life and values.

258

May other peoples also succeed in putting into bold words the true yearning of their
innermost depths. He who would brandish the torch of war in Europe can desire nothing but
chaos. 1 32 We, however, live in the firm conviction that our age will witness not the decline of
the West, but its resurrection. That Germany may furnish an immortal contribution to this
great work is our proud hope and our unshakeable belief.

259

Adolf Hitler - proclamation read by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner

Nuremberg, September 11, 1935

1. Jewish Marxism and parliamentary democracy related to it;

2. the politically and morally corrupting Center;

3. certain elements in a stubborn, dumb-reactionary bourgeoisie.

(jjf would like to point out in this context that the battle against the inner enemies of
^JJ the nation will never be frustrated by formal bureaucracy or its incompetence;
v where the formal bureaucracy of the State should prove ill-suited to solve a certain
problem, the German nation will activate its more dynamic organization as an aid to asserting
its vital necessities. For it is a grave error to suppose that the nation would exist only because
of some formal phenomenon and that, moreover, when such a phenomenon is not capable of
accomplishing the tasks assigned to it, the nation would capitulate in the face of these tasks.

On the contrary: what can be accomplished through the State will be accomplished
through the State. But whatever the State is incapable of accomplishing, due to its very
essence, will be accomplished by the Movement.

For the State as well is only one of the forms of organization in volkisch life, driven and
controlled by the direct expression of the Volk's will to live, by the Party, by the National
Socialist Movement.

Under no circumstances will the National Socialist State tolerate that the politicization
of the confessions be prolonged or even begun anew by any type of detour. And let no one
delude himself as to the determination of the Movement and the State! We have already
fought a battle against the political clergy and ousted it from the parliaments, and that after a
long struggle in which we had no state authority and the other side had it all. Today we have
this authority and will more easily be able to win the struggle for these principles. But we will
never wage this battle as a battle against Christianity or even against one of the two
confessions. But we will wage it in order to keep our public life pure and free of those priests
who have mistaken their calling, those who should have become politicians and not
clergymen.

After an incredible struggle for enlightenment, after endless sacrifices, we have
succeeded in converting nine tenths of our Volk to subordinate themselves to one opinion and
to one will. The last tenth comprises the remainder of thirtyseven parties, the confessions, the
former associations-in short, that very chaos which thrust Germany into one disaster after
another for centuries. And thus, when we calmly take in the perspective of what success
recent years have given to our German Reich, in the end we must always recognize the most
uplifting fact of all, namely: The most valuable thing is and remains the Movement, which has
joined the nation to form a whole and which allows its desires to manifest themselves in one
single will. What security, and what tranquillity reign in our Germany today! Wherever we
look, we see everywhere around us the ferments of decomposition, the elements of
dissolution.

260

Endless strikes, lockouts, street-fighting, destruction, hatred and civil war; rootless
Jewish-international wandering scholars are infiltrating the nations, agitating against all
healthy common sense and whipping up hostility among the people. Under the guise of
representing the interests of the classes, they are putting a civil war in motion which will lead
only to the utmost satisfaction of their own interests. And we are witnessing the
consequences. In a world which should actually live in affluence, need reigns. Countries with
a population of scarcely fifteen persons per square kilometer suffer from hunger, states which
are blessed with every conceivable natural resource are simply incapable of reducing their
armies of unemployed.

It is a triumph of the effectiveness of the National Socialist regime that it has
succeeded-in a country in which 137 persons live in one square kilometer, in a country which
has no colonies, which lacks most natural resources, which was drained to its very blood for
fifteen years, which lost its entire foreign capital, paid more than fifty billion in reparation
dues, which was confronted with the total ruin of its economy-that even given the worst
problems, it succeeded in preserving a means of existence, in reducing the number of
unemployed, so that today we are better off than many of the world's richer countries.

Today we can admit it openly: the year 1934 was unfortunately a bad harvest year. We
are still suffering from the aftereffects. But it was nevertheless possible to secure the German
Volk's supply of vitally important foodstuffs.

The fact that this was possible, in spite of the many restrictions, is an achievement of
which the broad masses of our Volk have perhaps not been sufficiently aware. The difficulties
connected with this harvest led many a time to a temporary shortage of this or that foodstuff.
We were nonetheless determined that under no circumstances would we capitulate as a certain
international press was ardently hoping. And we overcame the crisis. We were forced, in this
context, to repeatedly halt with every means available attempts to compensate for the bad
harvest by partly understandable but also partly unjustified price increases.

In this year we were-and will likewise be in future-motivated by the unshakeable desire
to prevent the German Volk from stumbling unawares into a new inflation. But this would
still be the unavoidable result of any increase in salaries or any increase in prices at present.
So if today, too, irresponsible egoists or unthinking fools fancy that any kind of shortage -
which can always arise- gives them the right to increase prices, this behavior would, if the
Government were to let it, set the well-known vicious circle of 1921 to 1923 in motion,
leaving the German Volk with an inflation on its hands for the second time around. For this
reason we will attack such elements from now on with brutal ruthlessness and-if good
intentions fail-will not shrink from using concentration camps to make them conform with
and adapt to the national interest as a whole.

261

Adolf Hitler - speech at NSDAP congress hall in Nuremberg

September 11, 1935
National Socialists! Party Comrades!

ixteen years ago the spiritual cornerstone was laid for one of the greatest and most
I significant manifestations of German life. The resolution of but a few men at that

time to extricate Germany from the fetters of its internal corrupters and to liberate
it from the yoke of external bondage constituted one of the boldest decisions in world history.
Now, after sixteen years of hard struggle, this scheme has evolved to become a decisive
historic achievement. A world of internal adversaries and obstacles was overcome, and a new
world is at the verge of being born. On this day, we hereby lay for this new world of the
German Volk the cornerstone of its first great monument. A hall shall rise which is to serve
the purpose of annually housing within its walls a gathering of the elite of the National
Socialist Reich for centuries to come. Should the Movement ever be silent, even after
millenniums, this witness shall speak.

In the midst of a hallowed grove of ancient oak trees will the people then marvel in
reverent awe at this first colossus among the buildings of the German Reich. With this
premonition I hereby lay the cornerstone of the Congress Hall of the Reich Party Congresses
in Nuremberg in the year 1935, the year of the freedom of the German nation hard won by the
National Socialist Movement.

But if such a so-called "artist" feels himself called upon to portray human life under all
circumstances from the viewpoint and perspective of what is inferior and diseased, then he
should do so in an age in which there is a widespread appreciation for just this type of
viewpoint. Today this age is over, and hence it is also over for this type of "would-be creative
artists." And though we are becoming ever firmer and more strict in our rejection of this, we
hold that we are not making a mistake. For he who is chosen by Providence to lend external,
graphically visible expression to the innermost and thus eternally healthy substance of a Volk
will never find himself on the path to such aberrations.

Thus we are not talking about a "threat to the freedom of art." Just as a murderer is not
granted the right to kill his fellow men in body simply because this would mean interfering
with his own freedom, a person similarly cannot be granted the right to kill the soul of the
Volk merely so as to avoid placing any restrictions on his dirty fantasy and his total lack of
restraint.

In the case of really great tasks, as a general rule, both those men who have
commissioned the task and those who accomplish it should bear in mind that, although the
assignment was given within a certain age, its accomplishment shall, by being performed to
the utmost, become ageless.

To this end it is necessary that the really great tasks of an age must be assigned
respectively, i.e. public commissions must, if their accomplishment is to generate eternal
value, be placed in a certain proportion in respect to the scale of the rest of life.

262

It is impossible to place the monumental architecture of the State or the Movement on a
scale corresponding to that of one or two centuries ago, while the products of bourgeois
creation in the sphere of private or even purely capitalistic architecture have expanded
conversely and increased many times over. What lent the cities of antiquity and the Middle
Ages their characteristic and hence admirable and endearing features was not the size of the
private bourgeois structures but the manifestations of community life towering above them.

In the bourgeois epoch, the architectural expression of public life was unfortunately
repressed in favor of buildings documenting private-capitalistic business life. But the great
historico-cultural task of National Socialist lies above all in departing from this trend.

We must, however, be guided not only by artistic but also by political considerations in
endowing upon the new Reich, with a view to the great precedents of the past, a worthy
cultural personification. Nothing is better suited to silence the little carpers than the eternal
language of great art.

Millenniums bow to its utterances in reverent silence. May God grant us the stature to
formulate these tasks in a manner equal to the stature of the nation.

This is doubtless a difficult undertaking.

The heroic feats of greatness which our Volk accomplished in history over 2,000 years
number among the most tremendous experiences of mankind. There were centuries in which
works of art corresponded to a spiritual human greatness in Germany-and in the rest of
Europe. The unique eminence of our cathedrals represents an incomparable standard for the
truly-in a cultural sense-monumental attitude of these ages. They demand from us more than
admiration for the work itself; they demand reverence for the races which were capable of
planning and carrying out such great ideas.

Since then, our Volk has risen and fallen with the changing tides of Fate. We ourselves
were witnesses of a world-defying heroism, of the deepest despair and shocked bewilderment.
Through us and in us, the nation has risen once again.

When today we call upon German art to take on new and great tasks, we are assigning
these not only in order to fulfill the wishes and hopes of the present, but in the sense of a
thousand-year legacy. By paying homage to this eternal national genius, we summon the great
spirit of the creative power of the past to come dwell in the present.

But such elevated tasks will make people grow, and we do not have a right to doubt
that, if the Almighty gives us the courage to demand what is immortal, He will give our Volk
the power to accomplish what is immortal. Our cathedrals are witnesses to the glory of the
past! The glory of the present will one day be gauged by the eternal values it leaves behind.
Only then will Germany undergo a revival of its art and our Volk become conscious of a
higher destiny.

263

Adolf Hitler - excerptions of the speech before the DAF and the RAD

Nuremberg, Zeppelin Field, September 12, 1935

(jjr*"ife necessarily divides us into many different groups and professions. It is the job
T^l of the political and spiritual education of the nation to overcome this division. This
C_ is primarily a job reserved for the Labor Service. It is to unite all Germans in labor
and make of them a community.

For this purpose, it shall place in the hand of each the same instrument of labor, the
instrument which does a Volk the most credit, the spade! There you march beneath the
guardian of peace, the weapon of our inner self-assertion! You march thus today in the entire
German Reich. The eye of the nation rests upon you, its hope! It sees in you something better
than it has been in the past. If the entire German Volk were to see you today, I believe that
even the last doubter would have been persuaded that the raising of a new nation, of a new
community of our Volk is not a rumor, but reality.

264

Adolf Hitler - address to 100,000 Political Leaders

Nuremberg, September 13, 1935

(jjf t is good that we are able to see each other like this once a year, you the Fuhrer, and
^JJ the Fuhrer yourselves. This can also serve as a lesson to all those who would so
v_ gladly make a distinction between the Fuhrer and his following, those who are so
incapable of understanding that there can be no distinction between us, who would so gladly
say: the Fuhrer, yes! But the Party-is that really necessary? 195 1 do not ask if it is necessary, but
if it was necessary! A commander without officers and soldiers-there are those who would
gladly welcome that! I will not be the commander without soldiers; I will remain your Fuhrer.

For me, you are the political officers of the German nation, bound to me for better or
worse, just as I am bound to you for better or worse. Not one man alone conquered Germany;
all united conquered Germany. One man won you over, and you have won over the German
Volk!

We who were able to witness the reinstatement of our peerless Army this year to our
most proud good fortune, all of us know that its ultimate and greatest strength lies in the Volk
which supports it. For no one is in need of idealism more than the soldier. If ever the hour,
that difficult, decisive hour of renunciation, should come upon him, what can but help him
then? Only the word faith, idealism. Do not be deluded! All other half -measures are
insignificant compared to the power of this destiny, this inner voice.

Hence we are particularly pleased today to have in our midst for the first time the
representatives and the representation of our new German Volksheer, the Army from which
nearly all of us without exception once came forth and to which the German Volk will once
again give its sons in the future, handing them over in trust in the hope that they may once
again become brave, disciplined, reliable, and self-assured men. We know that our Army is
not educating them in warlike militarism any more than we have ever done. It is only
educating them to be reliable, decent Volksgenossen who feel faithfully bound to the nation in
the hour of need and danger, and if ever Fate were to subject them to the most difficult test of
all, they would defend the freedom of their people bravely and decently. That is the reason
behind recreating our Army.

It was not created to wage offensive wars, but to protect and to defend our Volk so that
Germany may not be made to suffer yet again the sorry fate we were made to bear in the
fifteen years behind us. Not in order to deprive other peoples of their freedom, but to protect
our German freedom- that is the Army's purpose. But it will come all the more naturally for
this Army to accomplish its difficult offices the healthier the young German man is whom it
receives from us.

And that is our task, too, to educate the German man to be politically clean and pure so
that he may truly become a powerful member of our Volksgemeinschaft and assimilate for
himself as well a taste of this pure, great idealism which reigned during the age of the struggle
for German freedom. For as long as this idealism is alive in Germany, Germany shall never
die!

265

Adolf Hitler - address to the German women

Nuremberg, September 13, 1935

Today women's battalions were being formed in Marxist countries, and to that one
could only reply, "That will never happen here! There are things a man does, and he alone is
responsible for them. I would be ashamed to be a German man if ever, in the event of war, but
a single woman were made to go to the front." The woman had her own battlefield. With
every child to which she gave birth for the nation, she was waging her battle for the nation.
The man stands up for the Volk just as woman stands up for the family. A woman's equal
rights lie in the fact that she is treated with the high regard she deserves in those areas of life
assigned to her by nature.

Women still respected brave, daring and determined men, and men had always admired
and been attracted to feminine women. These were the two opposites which attracted each
other in life.

And if good fortune would have it that these two people find each other, then the
question of equal rights became superfluous, for it had already been answered by nature: it
was no longer equal rights, but a single unity! Man and woman represented two intrinsically
separate natures. In men, reason was dominant. But more stable than this was the emotion
evidenced in women.

When I returned from prison after thirteen months of imprisonment, when the Party had
been shattered, it was above all female party comrades who had held the Movement together.
They did not succumb to clever or reasonoriented deliberation, but acted according to their
hearts, and they have stood by me emotionally until today.

If our opponents were to allege, "You want to degrade women by assigning to them no
other task beyond providing children," he would reply that it is not a degradation to a woman
to become a mother, but the contrary-it is her utmost elevation.

There was, the Fuhrer continued, no greater nobility for a woman than to be the mother
of sons and daughters of a Volk. All the members of our youth lining the streets, so strong and
beautiful, these beaming faces, these shining eyes-where would they be had not woman after
woman been willing to give them the gift of life? The last immortality here on earth lay in
preserving the Volk and the Volkstum.

People should not be able to accuse us that we have no understanding of the dignity of
women. Quite the opposite! We have been in power now for three years, but I believe that
when we have had a National Socialist government for thirty, forty, or fifty years, women's
position will have become quite different from what it was in the past-a position which cannot
be gauged politically but only appreciated in human terms. We are happy knowing that the
German woman, with her instinctive insight, will understand this.

There was a time when liberalism was fighting for 'equal rights' for women, but the
faces of German women and German girls were devoid of hope, bleak and sad. And today?
Today we see countless beaming, laughing faces. And here again it is woman's instinct which
tells her for good reason: we can laugh once again, for the future of the Volk is guaranteed.

266

The compensation which National Socialism gives woman in exchange for her work lies
in that it is once again training men, real men, men who are decent, who stand erect, who are
brave, who love honor. I believe that when, in the past few days, our healthy, unspoilt women
have watched the marching columns, these sturdy and faultless young men of the spade, they
must have been saying to themselves: what a healthy, marvelous race is growing up here!
That is also an achievement which National Socialism has wrought for the German woman in
the scope of its attitude toward women in general.

We have now reintroduced general conscription, because it is a wonderful education we
wish to confer upon the upcoming young German generation, a wonderful breed which we are
rearing in the Hitler Youth, the SA, and the Labor Service. I believe that the German Volk
will not grow older during the next few years, but will create the impression that it remains
forever young.

"This all applies to our girls, too. They too are growing up in a different world, with
different ideas, and they, too, will become healthier than before. Thus the two columns march
along their respective paths and will sooner or later encounter one another."

Thus I believe that it is a marvelous thing after all to live in such an age and to lend a
helping hand at one point or another. When I am one day forced to finish this life, my final
conviction will be: it was not in vain. It was good, because it was a life of fighting, a life of
struggle; because it was a life of work towards an ideal which often seemed so distant and
which many a man believed would never be attained. We have reached our goal! That applies
to all of you who are fighting with us here. No German generation will be happier in the end
than ours. We have experienced infinite hardships. And the fact that we have succeeded in
overcoming them and that we will succeed ever better in overcoming them-that is such a
wonderful thing that all of us, men and women alike, can be proud and happy and will also be
proud and happy one day. The time will come when you will all think back with proud joy on
these years of struggling and fighting for this new Germany. Then it will be your most
treasured memory that, as German women, you helped wage the battle for our German Volk
in this great age of the German renascence and uprising.

267

Adolf Hitler - speech before 54,000 members of the Hitler Youth

in the Nuremberg stadium

September 14, 1935
German Youth!

fou are now lining up for this roll call for the third time; more than 54,000
representatives of a community which grows from year to year. The weight of
those you personify here each year has become consistently greater. Not only in
terms of quantity, oh no; we can see it: in terms of quality. If I think back on the first roll call
and on the second and compare them to this one today, I can see the same development we
see evidenced throughout the rest of German Volksleben: our Volk is becoming increasingly
disciplined, sturdier, more taut- and youth is beginning to as well. The ideal of the man has
been subjected to different views in our Volk as well. There were times-they seem to be long
ago and are almost incomprehensible to us-when the ideal of the young German man was, to
use the jargon, a beer-drinking, hard-living fellow.

Today we are happy to note that the ideal is no longer the beer-drinking and hardliving
young man, but the tough young man, impervious to wind and weather. For the main thing is
not how many glasses of beer he can drink, but how many blows he can withstand; not how
long he can make the rounds night after night, but how many kilometers he can march.

Today the beer-happy bourgeois (Bierspiesser) of those times is no longer regarded as
the ideal of the German Volk, but men and girls who are fit as a fiddle, who are string taut.
What we want from our German youth is different from what the past wanted of it. In our
eyes, the German youth of the future must be slender and supple, swift as greyhounds, tough
as leather, and hard as Krupp steel. We must cultivate a new man in order to prevent the ruin
of our Volk by the degeneration manifested in our age.

268

Adolf Hitler - speech before the SA and the SS

Nurnberg, September 15, 1935
MenoftheSAandSS!

/^J^'oday you present a different picture. I see how much has been learned within a

I year's time and what has changed in favor of the Movement. However, even

^W^though this external picture has altered, it nonetheless constitutes proof that the

spirit of the old-and by that I mean our best-times has remained, times in which the SA man

and SS man never asked where the march was headed but stood ever by the flag.

And it is good that your exterior also makes manifest the changing times we are so
lucky to witness. For Germany has once again undergone a great historic transition in these
past years, and you yourselves, my men of the SA, will notice it visibly and clearly in but a
few months. For the first time, many thousands shall report to you for duty: the discharged
soldiers of the first round of conscripts in the new German Army.

And just as we once came here, now year after year the German Volk, drilled in
protecting the nation, will flock to us and the men will be given the best German home in your
ranks.

What was once a two-year temporary schooling of the nation which was afterward lost
in the course of life and in the political doings of the parties-that is now being given in trust
and held in custody for the German Volk. Only then will the cycle of our Volk's education be
complete. The boys-they will become members of the Jungvolk, and the Pimpfs will join the
Hitler Youth, and the young men of the Hitler Youth will then report for duty in the SA, the
SS, and the other associations; and the SA men and the SS men will one day report for duty at
the Labor Service and from there proceed to the Army; and the soldier of the Volk will return
once more to the organization of the Movement, of the Party, to the SA and the SS, and never
again shall our Volk degenerate as it once regrettably did!

269

Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag

September 15, 1935

<Bi

n behalf of the German Reich Government, I have requested Reichstag President
|Pg. Goring to convene for today a session of the German Reichstag in

Nuremberg. The place was chosen because, by virtue of the National Socialist
Movement, it is closely connected with the laws which will be presented to you today for
passage; the time was chosen because the great majority of the deputies are still in Nuremberg
in the capacity of Party comrades. I would like to make a few general remarks on these bills
which are being introduced on a notice of motion.

The first part of the Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg has come to an end. The
Wehrmacht Day will mark its final conclusion tomorrow. The picture presented by this
celebration of the Movement echoes even more strongly last year's impression. The German
Volk has found the way to a unity and discipline such as has never before existed in history.
This expression of the stability of the Movement is simultaneously the expression of the
strength of the current regime. What the German nation longed for in vain for centuries has
now been given unto it: a united Volk of brothers, free of respective biases and the scruples of
past epochs. This inner strength will be reflected by the picture the Wehrmacht will present to
us tomorrow. It shall not be a mass demonstration, but an exposition of the inner value of our
new Army.

The German Volk can consider itself lucky at the knowledge of having regained this
strength after having suffered so terribly and been impotent for so long. And that particularly
at a time which seems to be afflicted by formidable crises. Germany has regained its health.
Its facilities are back in working order, both inside and out.

All the more greater is the responsibility of the leadership of the Reich in such grave
times. There can be but one guiding principle for the whole of our actions: our great and
unshakeable love of peace. It appears to me that such a statement is necessary at this time, for
a certain international press will unfortunately persist in its attempts to draw Germany into the
circle of its calculating designs.

Before we know it, there will be reports that Germany plans to take action against
France; there will be speculation that it is turning against Austria; or the suspicion that it will
attack Russia-don't ask me where. These threats are then usually presented as an argument for
the necessity of forming various coalitions, depending on the needs of the moment.

In no less generous terms does this press give German friendship away and treat it as
something given free for the having to any statesman inclined to reach out his hand to take it.

I hardly need assure you, my deputies and men of the Reichstag, that the German
Government does not base its decisions upon any kind of negative attitude towards anyone,
but solely on the consciousness of its own responsibility to Germany. The purpose of our
work is not, however, to squander what it has achieved in some thoughtless and hence lunatic
gamble.

270

The purpose of building up the German Army was not to threaten the freedom of any
European people, much less deprive them of it, but solely to preserve the freedom of the
German Volk. This viewpoint is the fundamental principle upon which the foreign policy of
the German Reich Government rests. Therefore we refuse to comment on incidents which do
not affect Germany, and do not wish to be dragged into such incidents. It is with all the more
concern, however, that the German Volk is following the incidents in Lithuania. 2 10 In the
midst of peacetime, the Memel territory was stolen from Germany years after the peace treaty.
This theft was legalized by the League of Nations and coupled only with the condition that the
contractually- stipulated autonomy awarded to the Memel Germans be preserved. For years
now, the German element in this area has been abused and tortured in violation of law and the
treaty. A great nation is forced to look on while, contrary to law and the stipulations of the
treaty, its blood relations who were attacked in the midst of peacetime and torn away from the
Reich are being subjected to a treatment worse than that to which criminals are subjected in
normal states.

Yet their only crime is that they are Germans and wish to remain Germans.

Proposals of those responsible in Kaunas have, to date, not progressed beyond mere
worthless formalities with no consequences within the country.

The German Reich Government views this development with interest and with
bitterness. It would be a laudable undertaking were the League of Nations to turn its attention
to the respect due to the autonomy of the Memel territory and see to it that it is put into
practice, before here, too, the events begin to take on forms which could one day but be
regretted by all those involved. The preparations for the election which are now taking place
there constitute a mockery of both law and obligation! Germany is by no means lodging
unreasonable claims in demanding that suitable measures be taken to coerce Lithuania to
comply with the existing treaties. A nation of sixty-five million ought surely to have the right
to demand that it at least receive no less consideration than the whims of a country of two
million.

Unfortunately, we are witnessing how, although the understanding between peoples is
more needed than ever, the Bolshevist International of Moscow has resumed its open and
methodical revolutionizing, which means whipping up animosity among the peoples. The
farce of the Comintern Congress in Moscow is a telling illustration of the sincerity of the
"non-intervention" policy this same power demands.

Since we expect nothing to come of protests and remonstrances in Moscow and have
learned through our own experience and, as far as we can ascertain, from the experiences of
other states as well, we are resolved to combat the Bolshevist revolutionary agitation in
Germany with the effective weapons of National Socialist enlightenment.

The Party Congress has certainly left no room for doubt that National Socialism-if an
attempt is made by Moscow-Bolshevism to establish a foothold in Germany or to drive
Germany into a revolution-will most definitely put a stop to this plan and such attempts.

We are further compelled to note that here, as everywhere, it is almost exclusively
Jewish elements which are at work as instigators of this campaign to spread animosity and
confusion among the peoples. The insult to the German flag-which was settled most loyally
by a statement of the American Government-is both an illustration of the attitude of Jews,

271

even in civil service status, towards Germany and revealing proof of the pertinence of our
National Socialist legislation which is designed as a precautionary measure to prevent from
the very onset that similar incidents take place in our German administration and in our
courts, and to prohibit them at any cost. However, should the pertinence of our view require
yet further underscoring, this is provided in abundance in the renewed boycott campaign
which the Jewish element has just launched against Germany.

This international unrest in the world unfortunately appears to have given rise to the
opinion among Jews in Germany that now perhaps the time has come to set Jewish interests
up in clear opposition to the German national interests in the Reich. Loud complaints of
provocative actions of individual members of this race are coming in from all sides, and the
striking frequency of these reports and the similarity of their content appear to indicate a
certain method behind the deeds themselves. These actions have escalated to demonstrations
in a Berlin cinema directed against a basically harmless foreign film which Jewish circles
fancied was offensive to them.

To prevent this behavior from leading to quite determined defensive action on the part
of the outraged population, the extent of which cannot be foreseen, the only alternative would
be a legislative solution to the problem. The German Reich Government is guided by the hope
of possibly being able to bring about, by means of a single secular measure, a framework
within which the German Volk would be in a position to establish tolerable relations with the
Jewish people. However, should this hope prove false and intra-German and international
Jewish agitation proceed on its course, a new evaluation of the situation would have to take
place.

I now propose that the Reichstag adopt the bills which the Reichstag President, Party
comrade Goring, will read aloud to you. The first and second laws repay a debt of gratitude to
the Movement, under whose symbol Germany regained its freedom,211 in that they fulfill a
significant item on the program of the National Socialist Party.

The third is an attempt at a legislative solution to a problem which, should it yet again
prove insoluble, would have to be assigned to the National Socialist Party for a final solution
by law. Behind all three laws stands the National Socialist Party, and with it and behind it
stands the nation.

I may request that you adopt the laws for passage.

272

Adolf Hitler - closing speech at the NSDAP congress in Nuremberg

September 16, 1935

len I will breathe my last breath is something I do not know. But that the Party
will live on is something I do know, and that it will successfully shape the future
of the German nation beyond any individuals, whether they be weak or strong, is
something I believe and something I know! For it guarantees the stability of the leadership of
the Volk and the Reich, and by its own stability it guarantees the authority this leadership
requires. The constitution of the new German Reich will grow out of this solid base. It is the
duty of the Party as weltanschaulicb shaper and political navigator of German fate to provide
the nation and thus the Reich with its Fuhrer. The more naturally and uncontestedly this
principle is established and maintained, the stronger Germany will be.

The army as the representative of and organization for the defensive strength of our
Volk must always preserve and maintain the organized military strength of the Reich
entrusted to it and place same in loyalty and obedience at the disposal of the Fuhrer given to
the nation by the Movement. For when the respective new Fuhrer is appointed, he shall be
Herr of the Party, Head of the Reich, and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht. If these
principles form the unshakeable foundation of the German structures of Volk and State,
Germany will be able to withstand any storms which may come its way.

But let the two fundamental manifestations of the new Reich both bear in mind that they
can only satisfy the demands placed upon them jointly. The Party gives to the Volk the Army,
and the Volk gives to the Army its soldiers; both together thus provide to the German Reich
the security of internal peace and order and the power to stand up for itself. Today, as Fuhrer
of the Reich and the nation, I can still personally offer help and advice. But these principles
must lead from the personal to the eternal.

Fuhrers will come and Fuhrers will die, but Germany must live on. And alone this
Movement will lead Germany to this life. All of us, though, will one day be judged by the
quality and historic permanency of what we are building today! We, my Party comrades, co-
leaders of the Volk and the Army, have been chosen by Fate to make history in the loftiest
sense of the word. What millions of people are deprived of has been given to us by
Providence. Even most distant posterity will be reminded of us by our work. And it should
one day find most noteworthy and distinguished of all the fact that, in an age marked by lack
of loyalty and rampant betrayal, it was possible in the Germany of our age to form as never
before a mutual league of the most loyal followers. And we know one thing: One day, a page
in world history will be devoted to us, the men from the National Socialist Party and the
German Army who joined efforts to build and safeguard the new German Reich. One day we
will stand then side by side, immortalized in the pantheon of history, immortalized in
indivisible loyalty as in the time of the great struggle and the great fulfillment.

273

Adolf Hitler - speech for the "Wehrmacht Day "

Nuremberg, Zeppelin Field, September 16, 1935

Soldiers of the new German Wehrmacht!

(jjjt'or the second time, units of the Army and the Navy have assembled at this spot; for
^JJTthe first time in the position of a free armed force (Wehrfreibeit). Now you have
v_ J been joined by the new units of our German Wehrmacht which can now be shown
to the German Volk in this, their new context.

The German was always a good soldier. For our Volk the service of arms was never an
enforced service, but a service of the highest honor in every period of our history. It was thus
all the more painful and dispiriting for the honorloving, decent German man not to be allowed
to be a soldier-or if so, under dishonorable and humiliating circumstances. How successfully
this situation has now been mastered is something evidenced to you, my soldiers, and today to
the entire German Volk, in this display of the union between the German man as soldier and
the weapons of modern technology. Now every young German man, should he be found
worthy by the nation, will join your ranks. And you will now once again perform your service
with arms which are in use today throughout the world.

This service requires of each and every one of you certain sacrifices. Each of you must
make a sacrifice in terms of personal freedom; he must exhibit obedience and subordination,
but also toughness, endurance and, above all, an utmost sense of duty.

Those who believe this sacrifice must be wrung out of the German man are mistaken!
Throughout the centuries, German men have done this voluntarily, and they were proud of
their accomplishments. And not only in peacetime did the German man joyfully make this
sacrifice to the nation as soldier; he did so no less when the crisis of the Reich called upon
him to protect Volk und Vaterland. The German was not only a good soldier in peacetime, but
a brave fighter at all times.

But what are all the sacrifices required of you and of us today compared to the sacrifices
required of millions of us and our comrades twenty years ago? May each of you, should he
ever perceive the duty of the soldier a burden, recall that eight days of drumfire required more
in terms of sacrifice from the battalions and regiments of our Old Army than the service of
peace during an entire year. The German Volk in arms was not brought to its knees by this. It
was brought to its knees only because it lost its inner freedom, its inner belief in its rights.
This faith has returned today, and this faith, my soldiers, belongs not only to hundreds of
thousands, but to millions of you; and millions of our Volksgenossen embrace you with this
burning faith, with this burning confidence and with this warm love.

And if you are personally required to make the sacrifices of obedience, of performing
your duty, of subordination, of being tough, enduring, and efficient, do not forget, my
soldiers, that the entire German Volk makes great sacrifices for you, too. It is a difficult task
for the German Volk to build what is standing here and in countless other places in Germany.
Our Volk must make difficult sacrifices, and it does so gladly. For first of all, it does not want
to see its sons badly equipped and secondly, it no longer wants to see Germany defenseless.

274

So we continue to make these sacrifices mutually-the Volk for you, and you for the
Volk! Both for Germany, our Volk, and our precious German Reich! And we are also making
these sacrifices with the conviction that it does not require a war to reward us for doing so.

Once Germany had a proud and brave army; it had heroic fighters. That is natural for
the German soldier.

But the army was not only the nation's great defense in wartime; in peacetime it was
also the splendid school of our Volk. It made men of us all, and the sight of it has always
bolstered in us the faith in the future of our Volk.

And this splendid Old Army is not dead; it was only sleeping and has now been
resurrected in you! You, my comrades, bear at the points of your weapons and on your
helmets a tremendous legacy. You are not something artificially created, something void of
tradition and a past; rather, whatever else Germany may have to offer pales compared to what
you must and can personify in terms of tradition. There is indeed no need for you to win for
the German army any title to fame; it already has that, you need only preserve it! And as we
stand here armed in steel and bronze, it is not because we feel it is necessary to repair the
honor of the German Volk. As long as this honor was borne by the soldier, no one in the
world has ever been able to rob us of it! Germany has never lost its military honor, least of all
in the last war. Thus we need not recover this honor. But we will see to it in the future that not
as much honor, not as much heroic courage, and not as many sacrifices are in vain as has been
the case in the past.

This army of old-of which you are a continuation and whose representative and bearer
of tradition you must be-offered the greatest sacrifices on the altar of the Vaterland ever
required of an army from its Volk.

Demonstrate that you are worthy and deserving of these sacrifices! See to it that the
nation can depend on you just as it could once depend on our splendid old military, on our
Old Army and Wehrmacht. See to it that the trust of the nation can be placed in you just as it
was once placed in the army, for you wear helmets from its most glorious age. Then the
German Volk will love you; it will see in you the best part of the German Volk, just as it
sends its best sons into this unique organization year after year. This Volk will then believe in
its army and gladly and joyfully make any sacrifice out of the conviction that, in doing so, it is
preserving the peace of the nation and securing the education of the German Volk.

For you have become men, and we want the whole of German youth to attend this
splendid, final school and likewise become the men you are. We want to raise a tough breed
which is strong, reliable, loyal, obedient, and decent, so that we need not be ashamed of our
Volk before history.

That is what the nation requests, what the nation hopes for and demands of you! And I
know you will fulfill this demand and this hope and this request, for you are the new soldiers
of the new German Reich!

275

Adolf Hitler - speech at Erntedankfest (Thanksgiving)

Buckeberg near Hamelin, October 6, 1935

ffifust as you are standing here before me, my German Volksgenossen, there stand

ll multitudes more, sixty-eight times as many. Our Volk numbers sixty-eight million.

\U These sixty-eight million are our principals; we are under obligation to all of them,

responsible to all of them. They all want to live; they all need to eat; they need freedom, and

thus they all have command over our actions. The Volk alone is our master (Herr), and it is

this Volk we serve according to our best knowledge and belief.

However, in order to fulfill this task, it is necessary for each person to understand that
the discipline and order demanded of him are to his own advantage and that the authority
which requires this order is acting in his own interest. Everyone must understand this, for
everyone profits from it.

And I thus turn once again to you, my peasants. When you till your soil, when you walk
behind the plough, when you plant and when you finally arm [!] yourselves for the harvest,
you would not enjoy it if someone were constantly standing beside you who knew nothing
about farming but who felt called upon to constantly criticize you. My dear peasants, what
would you do with a man like that? And if we try to defend ourselves against these people,
they say, "There is a need for criticism." No, my venerable Sirs, the critics: there is a need for
work! There is a need for someone to have the courage to assume the responsibility and to
stand by it to the death. Where would humanity be if in place of work and responsibility only
criticism had been the governing, controlling and guiding factor in the lives of men? What all
of us have witnessed today with our own eyes, this wonderful, condensed display of military
action [!], would not be possible in terms of its prerequisites, its preparation and its
performance were this institution governed by the rule, "Critics welcome here," instead of,
"Here orders are given, and orders are obeyed!" It is not difficult, in view of the vast amount
of work being accomplished everywhere in Germany, to ascertain with notebook in hand that
somewhere, sometime, perhaps a mistake has been made. I have yet to see the peasant who
can state that he has never had a bad harvest, never perhaps could have done something more
sensibly. That is not the point. The point is rather that one tries to do the right thing and never
capitulates in the face of whatever difficulties may arise! Anyone forced to eliminate such
distress as we were must seek new paths.

Unfortunately, our predecessors in office failed here and did not bequeath to us any
recipes as to how such distress could be alleviated. We have sought our own paths, and we
have found them. I believe the proof is in rallies such as these, too.

Where else could it be possible that nearly a sixtieth of a great Volk's total millions
flock together on one day in order not only to solemnly bear witness to their unity, but also to
their solidarity with this regime and this system? Where is the statesman, where the head of
state who can go forth into his Volk as I go forth among you?22? That is the marvelous thing,
that our Volk has understood this regime, its necessity and its actions, and carried on as usual,
in contrast to the weaklings who cannot comprehend that our Volk has understood that the
actions we are taking lie in the interest of all.

276

Providence has enabled us this year to reap a harvest not only plentiful in financial
terms; it has blessed us even more: from the beginning of this year onward, Germany was able
to score numerous and decisive victories. Our German Wehrmacht was brought back to life.
The German fleets will come to life once more. The German cities and the beautiful villages-
they are protected, watched over by the strength of the nation, watched over by the weapon in
the air.

Far beyond that, we want to say thanks for a special harvest: in this hour, we wish to
thank the hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of German women who once
more gave us the most beautiful gift they have to give us: many hundreds of thousands of
small children! [-] We want to do our duty, to take the straight path without looking back, as
we have done hitherto. We want to stride through the difficulties of this age, strong and
prepared, and never weaken. We want to do the right thing and have fear of no man, and want
then to submit a request to the Almighty that He bless our work in the year to come as well,
that He once more bestow upon our fields a plentiful bounty and upon us all great success.

May He especially keep alive in our Volk the right insight, may He secure for it inner
[!] peace and instill in us all the wisdom and the prudence to do the right thing, that our Volk
may live and Germany never die.

277

Adolf Hitler - opening speech at the third Winterhilfswerk

Kroll Opera in Berlin, October 8, 1935

(jjjt'irst of all: in terms of power, class struggle in Germany today has been abolished;
■JJjin other words, no one is left who would be in a position to engage in it. There may
v_ J be an isolated individual here or there who still entertains this idea in his thoughts

and hopes for better times-which is to say worse times-in which he might once again be in a

position to mobilize these instincts.

Let no one be deceived! We have the power to prevent that, and we are resolved to
prevent it under all circumstances, and to do so on both sides.

Secondly: we are presently engaged in arriving at a material solution to the differences
underlying this class struggle. We are fortunate to be able to enforce this material solution
because we ourselves are above such differences. I might well say that I view myself as the
most independent of men in this context; obligated to no one, subordinate to no one, indebted
to no one-instead answerable only to my own conscience. And this conscience has but one
single commander: our Volk! The German Volk and its elite, united in the Movement, in the
National Socialist Party!

Now one might say, "if the economy cannot solve everything, why do you not have the
State solve it?" But what is the State? Volksgenosse, you are the State! And the State should
not force you to fulfill this natural duty; rather, you yourself should express in real terms your
feelings for the Volksgemeinschaft, you must come forth and make voluntary sacrifices! []
Don't tell me, "All right, but it's still a bother to do all this collecting." You have never
known hunger, otherwise you would know what a bother it is to be hungry. You have never
experienced what it means to have nothing to eat, much less what it means not to be able to
give one's loved ones anything to eat! And if the other then says, "But you know, all these
stew Sundays23i-I would like to give something, but it's my stomach, I have stomach problems
all the time anyway, I don't understand it. I'd give ten pfennigs just the same." No, dear
friend, there is a reason behind everything we do. It is particularly useful for you, someone
who does not understand, if in this way at least we can guide you back to your Volk, to the
millions of your Volksgenossen who would be happy if they only had that stew all winter
long that you perhaps eat once a month. We did this intentionally and will never depart from
it. On the contrary: we are convinced that this is a great day in the German nation and that he
who would play truant is without character and a pest within our Volk.

We hold that, by such visible demonstrations, we are continually stirring the conscience
of our Volk and making each of you once more aware that you should perceive yourself as a
Volksgenosse, and that you should make sacrifices! Do not say, I would gladly give! You
should give, even if it means forbearing on your part, for you should make sacrifices for
others. We too might have done things differently. But no, we want to show the whole world
and our Volk that we Germans perceive the word "community" not as a hollow phrase, but
that for us it really does entail an inner obligation.

That is our war! We are engaged in the greatest campaign of conquest in world history;
in other words, we are making the conquest of our German Volk.

278

That is the most splendid conquest there can be-if one has possession of a Volk which
shares one mind, one heart, one will, and one action. If this conquest is successful, Providence
will not withhold from us our earthly reward in other respects, either.

We National Socialists view this as our tremendous, great task, the most splendid
mission there is, the most wonderful battle we can imagine. Anyone who has once found
access to this world of ideas will be infinitely and richly rewarded. He will then no longer
view it as something painful, as a series of deprivations, but will finally achieve true
happiness, namely the happiness of being able to help others and thus to make progress on the
road to pure idealism.

Therefore this Winterhilfswerk is a proud affair of the heart to us National Socialists.
We are truly proud in feeling that, with it, we have built up something which the world has
hitherto not known the likes of, nor we ourselves. If we take only the achievements of peace,
of our rich age of peace, as a comparison-how deplorable that was! 232 That is the way of
things: first our Volk had to be beaten so that it could finally find its way to its own.

Hence we are once more appealing to the Germans. And we are not miserly regarding
the outcome of this project. We do not exclude anyone! We are fighting with the Communists
here, and we will beat them into the ground if necessary. But should they say, "I'm hungry"-
fine, then let them have something to eat.We are not fighting them in order to kill them, but in
order to preserve our Volk from madness. But if they come to their senses and return to their
Volk, they shall be welcomed with open arms. We rejoice in every person who has found the
way to his community. We are just as resolved to defend this community as we are generous
in winning over members for this community.

279

Adolf Hitler - speech at the Biirgerbraukeller

Munich, November 8, 1935

(jjj") y the summer [1923] we had already realized that the dice would have to fall one
way or another in Germany. At that time we were aware that, although we were
perhaps weakest in terms of numbers, in terms of quality we were at the top by a
long margin. When the fall came and the events began to pile up, it became more and more
evident that unscrupulous scoundrels (gewissenlose Halunken) were aiming, under the
pressure of the occupation of the Ruhr, to ultimately tear Germany apart. At that point there
grew in us-I can admit, there grew in me the resolve that, if things were ever to progress that
far, we would take the law of action into our own hands at least twenty-four hours before and
not wait until the other side found the courage to make a decision and thus take action. One
thing was clear: whoever summoned up the courage to take action in that inflationary time
when absolutely everything was collapsing, was certain to have the Volk behind him.

Had a different flag been raised, the foreign powers would have immediately declared:
we will no longer tolerate that this "liberation"-for that was how Germany's fragmentation
was described-is halted yet again by the attempt to restore the hegemony of one or the other
Federal States. We knew that. And it was out of this urgent feeling for the hour and out of the
need of this hour that we resolved to take action.

Today there is no reason for me to reveal all the details. I will do so when I no longer
live. 257 What happened then is something one not yet need know today, but one thing I can
surely say is: it was the most daring decision of my life.

When I think back on it now, it makes me dizzy. The decision to strike a blow at a part
of Germany and to capture the enemy's consolidated forces at one fell swoop-it was a bold
decision, bold because one needed the courage to take over power with the existing means-
and they were limited. Yet this decision was necessary and unavoidable. It was the only thing
that could be done.

In that hour, someone had to take a stand against the treason and confront those traitors
with the national slogan. Who did it was of no consequence in the end. We did it. I dared to
do it.

Then Fate was on our side. It did not allow an action to succeed which, had it
succeeded, would necessarily have failed in the end due to the inner immaturity of the
Movement and the defects of its organizational and intellectual foundations at the time. Today
we know this ! Our own deeds back then were manly and brave. And Providence acted wisely.
But those brave deeds were not in vain. For in the end, the great national Movement came of
them; in other words, this explosion attracted the attention of Germany as a whole to the
Movement at one fell swoop. And while our opponents believed they had destroyed us, in
reality the seed of the Movement had been hurled out to fall all over Germany at one fell
swoop.

When the big trial took place, we were able-for the first time before such a tremendous
German and international forum- to stand up for our ideals.

280

We scorned to say as the others did: we didn't mean it like that; no, we said: we want to
destroy Germany's traitors. Unfortunately we did not succeed. At that time we solemnly
declared, "We have the responsibility, and we bear the responsibility. We regret only one
thing: that we did not succeed." When we were engaged in the first trial and were waging that
battle, it was still natural-because they were all, in fact, leaders-that each individual was to
stand up for his actions and take the entire responsibility. But there was one thing I feared.
Following us were nearly 100 Party comrades to come, men from minor combat patrols,
members of certain SA storm troops. They, too, would be dragged before the judge. I was
already in the fortress when these trials began to unwind. And I had only one fear, namely that
under the pressure of being held in detention etc. or of all these methods of conducting trial,
one or the other of them might perhaps weaken and try to save himself by declaring, "But I'm
innocent, was forced to do it, I had no choice." My heart overflowed when I saw the first
report of these trials and when I read in the Muncbener Post (at that time it was delivered to
us): "The people from the combat patrols are just as brazen and impertinent as their lord and
master." Then I knew: Germany is not lost. The spirit will find a way to survive! It was one
thing they would not be able to stamp out.

And these same people from the combat patrols and these same SA men later became
the largest organizations of the German Movement, the SA and the SS. And the spirit has
remained and proven itself ten thousand times over, hundreds of thousand times over.

Because you see, that is what we owe to these dead: the example they gave us in a most
terrible time in Germany. As we marched forth from here, we knew that it was no longer a
triumphal march. We went forth in the conviction that it was the end, one way or another. I
remember one man who said to me outside on the stairs as we were leaving, "This is the end."
Each of us carried this conviction with him.

At this point I must pay tribute to a man who is not with us today, whom I asked at the
time not to march at the head-General Ludendorff-and who replied to me, "I will stand at the
head." And who then took his place in the foremost rank.

But that was the point, that in spite of this premonition the company was determined.
When that blood had been shed, the first act of the German drama came to an end. There was
nothing else one could do. Now the legal power stood armed against the national liberation
movement. And it was then the realization had to dawn that this path could no longer be taken
in Germany.

That was over. And now comes the second infinite accomplishment of those who died.
For nine years I was forced to fight legally for power in Germany.

Many were those who had tried that before me. But because they preached legality, they
got only weaklings, only the cowardly, to join their movement.

The revolutionary men, the men of action, stood outside their ranks. Had I not attempted
this revolution in November 1923, staged a coup, and had blood not been shed and so many
killed in the process, I would not have been able to say for nine years, "From now on there
will be legal fighting only." Or I, too, would have got only the half-men.

Only thus did I later have the energy to persist in adhering to my course, which was now
obviously the only right one. As we know from the history of the Party, there were many who

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opposed me, who reproached me, saying, "How can it be done legally?" But I was able to tell
them, "Gentlemen! What do you want, do you want to teach me how to fight? Where were
you when we launched our attack? I don't need you to tell me anything about revolutions or
legality. I've done all that myself. You couldn't summon up the courage. So hold your
tongues now!" In this way I was able to build up a movement made of men, a movement
which took the only path it was possible to take. And we are infinitely grateful for that. For
we are not alone in this world. Surrounding us are huge states looking upon every type of
German uplifting with suspicion. We can only hold our own against them if we are strong not
only in terms of Weltanschauung but also in terms of weapons. And there was no doubt about
that. That was not to be accomplished by our destroying the existing arms institution, but by
reconciling it absolutely and in its entirety as a unified whole with the National Socialist idea
and the realization of this idea, and hence founding this new federation which allows
Germany once more to become so strongly manifest for all the world to see.

I saw that the moment the echoes of those shots here died. If you go back and read my
final speech in the major trial, you will most likely be able to say that I prophetically foresaw
the only possible course of events; I voiced it, and I adhered to that course persistently for
nine years. I was only able to adhere to it because this action had taken place before, and
because men had died for this course before.

The fact that a new naval ensign was raised yesterday in the German Reich constitutes a
tremendous event. Just imagine: we can follow the German Volk throughout history for
nearly 2,000 years, and never was the Volk as united in the form of its inner convictions and
its actions as it is today. For the first time since Germans have inhabited the world there is one
Reich, ruled by one Weltanschauung, shielded by one army-and all this joined under one flag.

Truly the palls of these sixteen fallen soldiers have celebrated a resurrection unique in
world history. They have become the freedom banners of their Volk.

And the most wonderful thing is that this great unity in Germany, this victory of a
movement, of an idea, followed by the obligation of the entire Volk, evolved from this
sacrifice. And all of this we owe to these first men. For if I had found no one at that time to
support this Reich with life and limb, it would also have been impossible at a later point. All
of the ensuing blood sacrifices were inspired by the sacrifices of those first men.

That is the reason why we are bringing them forth from the depths of oblivion to stand
for all time before the great public eye of the German Volk. In killing these sixteen, the
opponents believed they had killed the National Socialist Movement. But they succeeded only
in stirring the river of blood which has been flowing ever more strongly since. Today, this tie,
this armband from back then, embraces the whole of the German Volk and reaches far
beyond. For today Germans everywhere-and that is the miraculous thing-recognize no other
symbol of fraternity than what you, my Party comrades and Volksgenossen, wore even then
on your arms. And it is truly a miracle to follow the evolution of our Movement. It will seem
like a fairytale to posterity.

A Volk is shattered; then a mere handful of unknown men stands up and embarks upon
a crusade whose beginning is zealous and whose course continues to be zealous. Only a
couple of years later, these few people and unknown nameless have given rise to numerous
battalions, and a few more years later these battalions have already become regiments and

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divisions; Ortsgruppen become districts (Kreise) and Gaus. And again but a few years later,
this Movement sends numerous deputies to the representative bodies.

And it wages its battle untiringly on the street. Again and again there are new holes in
its ranks, thousands are injured-but the river swells nonetheless and fights its way through to
power. And then it raises its standard to fly over an entire state. A splendid crusade! It will go
down as one of the most miraculous and remarkable phenomena in world history. And history
will attempt to find analogues and parallels, but it will hardly find a parallel in which,
beginning with such a birth, an entire Volk and a state could be totally conquered in so few
years.

This miracle is something we have wrought. We are the fortunate ones who are not
learning about it from books, but were chosen by Fate to live through it. We, my comrades in
arms, can be proud that history has appointed us to accomplish such a mission. Many years
ago I said to my followers, "Perhaps there are those among you who would ask, 'What's in it
for me?' My Party comrade: the day will come when you will be particularly proud of this
armband, you will inscribe upon it the year of your enlightenment and be pleased to be able to
say: I've been with the cause all this time.'" This is what joins us all and welds us together;
coming generations will learn it one day. But we can say: we were there. That is our
accomplishment! Other generations learn from heroic sagas and heroic crusades. We have
lived this saga and marched in this crusade. Whether the name of a certain individual among
us lives on in posterity is of no consequence. We are all bound together in a single, great
phenomenon. It will live on.

It will nevermore die out in Germany, and from the sacrifices of the first fighters will
come forth the renewed strength to make sacrifices. Thus our gratitude to those who made the
first sacrifices is undying. Undying because the Movement is undying and because it must
always remember to whom it owes all this. One should not ask, "How many are dead or
wounded?" but rather, "How many marched back then?" Only then can one get a picture of
the dimensions of that instance. And one must also ask, "How many did they march against?"
For was ever in Germany such a battle taken up against such superior forces? It certainly
required courage. And because they demonstrated courage back then, we shall never forget
them.

Just as it was clear to me that, if Fate were once to give me power, I would take these
comrades out of their cemeteries and honor them and show them to the nation; just as I
constantly kept sight of this resolve, so have I now fulfilled it. They are now attaining German
immortality. Back then they could not yet see today's Reich, but only sense its coming. Fate
denied them the chance to personally witness this Reich. However, because they were no
longer allowed to personally witness and see this Reich, we will make certain that this Reich
sees them. And that is the reason why I have neither laid them in a vault nor banned them to
some tomb. No, just as we marched back then with our chest free so shall they now lie in
wind and weather, in rain and snow, under God's open skies, as a reminder to the German
nation. Yet for us they are not dead. These pantheons are not vaults but an eternal guardhouse.
Here they stand guard for Germany and watch over our Volk. Here they lie as true witnesses
of our Movement.

Back then we and our generation fulfilled our duty to these dead comrades. We did not
forget them, but cherished them loyally in our hearts and, as soon as we could, we made

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certain that the entire Volk was once more made aware of their sacrifice, that the German
nation would never forget this sacrifice.

To you yourselves, my old fellow fighters, I would now like to extend a welcome.
Twelve years ago we were in this hall, and now we are here again.

But Germany has changed. What I was able to predict would follow the uplifting twelve
years ago has come to pass. Today the German Volk is united in its political leadership and in
the structuring of its inner life as well as in carrying the sword. We have once more become a
strong state, a powerful Volk, no longer helplessly at the mercy of others. Today the flag is
firmly anchored, pennant and standard for the German resurrection, for the new Reich.

And once again, as so often before, I would like to thank you for finding your way to
me back then, for joining an unknown man, falling into his ranks and taking up the march
with him; for sending representatives to my rallies and thus clearing the way for the weapon
of the spirit. Hence I ask you to think back on this time again and again. For it is a wonderful
thing to be able to harbor such memories.

It is something granted to but few generations in thousands of years. You have been
chosen by Fortune. You have joined the right flag. And you shall stand by this flag as the Old
Guard of the National Socialist Revolution.

Long live our National Socialist Germany! Long live our Volk! And may today the dead
of our Movement, Germany and its men, living and dead, live on!

Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

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Adolf Hitler - "New Year 's Proclamation to the National Socialists
and Party Comrades " - read by Dr. Joseph Goebbels

ational Socialists! Party Comrades! The new Reich is ringing in the New Year for
the third time. At the beginning of the twelve months past, the imminent collapse
of the National Socialist regime was prophesied-for the third time.

And for the third time, under this regime Germany has become stronger and healthier in
every area of its national life.

I am conscious that, no matter what might happen to Germany, the Party will remain a
stable and indestructible foundation for the German will to live, just as it has been in the past
fifteen years. A zealously devoted community of German men, German women, and German
youth will stand behind me: as it did in the past in both good times and bad, so it will in the
future!

May the year 1936 see us filled with a new and sacred enthusiasm to work and stand up
for our Volk.

May it see us all united in the consciousness of the common task assigned to us. But
today we wish to thank the Almighty who has given our work His blessings in the past. And
we wish to join together in our humble request to Him that He not desert us in the future.

Long live the National Socialist Movement!
Long live our united German Volk and Reich!

Berlin, January 1, 1936 Adolf Hitler

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Adolf Hitler - speech in the Berlin Lustgarten

January 30, 1936

Men of the SA! National Socialists! Party Comrades!

len we take a retrospective look today, it does not end in the year 1933, but must
.go back further. What was a moment of surprise back then for many who did not
know our Movement, was for us and for you, my Old Fighters, but the hour of
fulfillment.

There were many, particularly outside Germany, who may have been amazed on
January 30 and in the following weeks and months at the miracle which had taken place
before their very eyes. Yet you, my comrades, and I had together awaited this hour for a
decade, had believed in it and placed our hopes in it. For us, it was not a surprise but rather
the culmination of fourteen years of hard fighting. We set forth not blind, but seeing and
believing. And thus when I look back on that day I am gripped with a deep gratitude,
gratitude to those who enabled me to experience this day three years ago. Today they are
gathered here from throughout the German Reich as the pioneers and banner bearers of our
Movement, the two eldest from each storm troop. They all experienced first-hand the
evolution of our Movement, the evolution of its struggle, its fight and its conquests. And I
myself stood over this fight for fourteen years. I conducted the fight for fourteen years; I also
founded this SA and, in its ranks and at its fore, led the Movement onward for fourteen years.
I have come to know you. And I know: everything you are, you are through me, and
everything I am, I am through you alone.

The best core of the German nation already stood in our ranks that day. The best of our
Volk had already chosen us that day. Only the petty doubters and the unreasonable were still
standing to the side. But now these ranks have been markedly diminished. For what stands
against us today is not standing against us because we are National Socialists, but because we
have made Germany free and strong once again. Those are the enemies of our Volk in our
own land whom we know from the time of the Great War, from the time of the regrettable
revolt in 1918, and whom we know from the time of our worst decay. They are the only ones
who not only do not want to find their way to us, but who will also never be able to find the
way-and whom we ourselves can do without.

The Movement has given to the German Volk an element of oneness and unity which
will long have an effect, far into the most distant future. Those who believe that this
Movement is still bound today to a single person are mistaken.

I was its herald. And today from this one herald have come millions. If one of us draws
his last breath today, he knows that after him come ten others! This Movement will fade no
more. It will lead Germany on, and even if our enemies refuse to accept the fact, Germany
will never again lapse into a state of that most sorry disgrace we were forced to endure.

And you, my oldest Party fighters, men of the SA and SS and political soldiers, are the
guarantors of this being as it is. You are the guarantors that this spirit shall never die out. As
you stand here, members of the entire German Volk, of all professions, all ranks, and all
classes, from every confession, joined to form a whole, blind to all but this Germany and

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your service to it, there will grow forth from among you a young generation, inspired by the
same spirit, seeing in you their model and following you.

Germany will not live through the times of November 1918 again. Let every man
relinquish the hope that the wheels of world history could ever he turned back.

At the same time, just as we have always preached peace to our Volk at home, we want
to be a peace-loving element among the other peoples. We cannot repeat that often enough.
We seek peace because we love peace! But we stand up for honor because we have no desire
to live without it.

Today we can proudly stand up before the world as Germans. For particularly in this
last year of our regime, the German Volk has been given back its honor before the world. We
are no longer defenseless Helots but have become free and self-assured 'world citizens.' It is
with pride that we can allow these three years to pass before our mind's eye. They constitute
an obligation for the future as well. The coming years will not require less work. There are
individuals who believe themselves capable of striking a blow at National Socialism in that
they claim, 'Yes, but all of that requires sacrifices.' Yes, my worthy petits bourgeois, our
fight has required constant sacrifice. But you did not go through that. Perhaps you imagine
Germany has become what it is today because you did not make any sacrifices.

No! It is because we were able to make sacrifices and wanted to do so that this
Germany came to be! So if someone tells us, 'That means the future will require sacrifices,
too,' we say 'Quite right!' National Socialism is not a doctrine of lethargy, but a doctrine of
fighting.

Not a doctrine of good fortune, of coincidence, but a doctrine of work, a doctrine of
struggle, and thus also a doctrine of sacrifices. That is how we did things before the fight, and
in these past three years this has not changed, and it will remain so in the future!

Only one thing matters: for millenniums our Volk has had to make sacrifices for its
chosen path in life and its life-struggle. It has been given nothing, but only too often the
sacrifices have been for naught. Today the Movement can give the German Volk this
guarantee: whatever sacrifices you, German Volk, make, will no longer be in vain; rather,
these sacrifices will always win you a new life.

And I would like to ask you to join me once again in uttering the battle cry for what
means most to us in this world, for which we once fought and struggled and triumphed,
which we did not forget in the time of defeat, which we loved in the time of need, which we
adored in the time of disgrace, and which is sacred and dear to us now in the time of
victories.

Our German Reich, our German Volk, and our one and only National Socialist
Movement:

Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

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Adolf Hitler - speech in Schwerin

February 12, 1936

My German Volksgenossen! National Socialists!
My dear deceased Party Comrade!

(jjf t is a painful path the peoples must take to find their fortunes. The milestones along
jj the way have always been graves, graves in which their best men lie buried.

Movements, too, can reach the goal of their desires -if truly worth striving for-only
by way of this same painful path. Happiness cannot be had for nothing in this world.
Everything must be hard-won and bitterly earned, and every fight will require sacrifices and
result in victims. The fact that these victims are witnesses of the holy conviction upon which
such a fight is based makes them guarantors of victory, success and fulfillment! Our own
National Socialist Movement did not begin by demanding sacrifices from others. Back then
we stood in the front lines of the World War as soldiers, and there did our duty for Germany.
And when this Germany was delivered a lethal stab at home in those November days of
1918, we attempted to convert those who, at that time, were the tools of a terrible
supranational power. We were not the ones who victimized our Volksgenossen who rose up
against Germany. During those November days the bloody red terror began to rage openly in
Germany for the first time. In Berlin and many other places, German men were murdered:
not because they had done anything wrong- no, only because they were devoted to Germany
and wanted to remain devoted to it. In the heavy fighting of the first quarter of 1919, German
men everywhere sank to the ground, struck by the bullets of their own Volksgenossen.

They did not die because they harbored any hatred for these Volksgenossen, but merely
because of their love for Germany. Because they refused to believe that a free and honorable
Germany had come to an end, because they wanted to devote themselves to the future of this
German Volk; that is why they were shot, stabbed, murdered by mad, blind people! Yet
behind this mad blindness we see at every turn the same power, at every turn the same
phenomenon which led these people on and stirred them up and finally equipped them with
rifles, pistols, or daggers! The victims multiplied. The soviet republic broke out in the south
of the Reich, and for the first time now we are seeing victims who had already made an inner,
albeit unconscious, choice to take the path leading to National Socialism. These hundreds
who were murdered back then in their drive to help Germany and to save Germany have now
been joined by eleven Volksgenossen, ten men and one woman, who consciously supported a
new idea, who had never harmed a single opponent, who knew but one ideal, the ideal of a
new and purified, better Volksgemeinschaft: the members of the Thule Society. 42 They were
savagely slaughtered in Munich as hostages. We know who the principals are. They too were
members of this disastrous power which was and continues to be responsible for the fratricide
in our Volk.

Then the National Socialist Movement set out on its path, and I must put one thing
straight here: on this, the path of our Movement, lies not a single opponent murdered by us,
not a single assassination. We rejected that from the very first day onwards. We have never
fought with these weapons. However, we were just as determined not to spare our own lives,
but to defend the life of the German Volk and the German Reich, and to protect it from those
who would not shrink from the most treacherous murder, as history has so often taught us.

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Then comes an infinitely long list of murdered National Socialists, murdered by
cowards, nearly always ambushed and beaten to death, stabbed or shot. But behind every
murder stood the same power which is responsible for this murder: behind the harmless,
insignificant, indoctrinated Volksgenossen who were driven to sedition stands the hate-filled
power of our Jewish foe, a foe to whom we had done no harm but who attempted to
subjugate and make of our German Volk its slave, who is responsible for all the misfortune
which came upon us in November 1918 and responsible for the misfortune which plagued
Germany in the years thereafter! They all died, these party comrades and good comrades, and
so were others, too, to die; many hundreds have survived as cripples or badly wounded; many
have lost their power of sight, are paralyzed; more than 40,000 others were injured. Among
them were so many loyal men whom we all knew who were dear and close to us, of whom
we knew they were incapable of doing harm to anyone and who never had done harm to
anyone but been guilty of a single crime, namely, of having devoted themselves to Germany.
One who stood in the ranks of these victims was Horst Wessel, the singer who gave the
Movement its song, never suspecting that he too would join the spirits who march with us
now and have marched with us in the past.

Thus National Socialism has now registered its first conscious martyr (Blutzeuge)
abroad. A man who did nothing but stand up for Germany-which is not only his sacred right,
but also his duty in this world; who did nothing but be mindful of his homeland and loyally
pledge himself to it. He too was murdered exactly as were so many others. We know this
method. Even as we took power three years ago on January 30, exactly the same incidents
were taking place in Germany: in Frankfurt an der Oder, then again in Kopenick, and again in
Brunswick. The same procedure was used each tune: a few men appear, call the man to come
out of his house, and then stab him to death or shoot him down.

That is no coincidence; a guiding hand organized these crimes and will continue to do
so. Now, for the first time, the party responsible for these deeds has become visible. For the
first time this party has not employed a harmless German Volksgenosse. It is a glorious
chapter for Switzerland and for our own Germans in Switzerland that no one let himself be
hired to do this deed, thereby forcing the spiritual author to himself become the perpetrator.
Thus our Party Comrade was struck down by the power which is waging a fanatical battle not
only against our German Volk, but against every free, autonomous, and independent people.
We understand the declaration of war, and we will respond! My dear Party Comrade, your
death is not in vain! Our dead have all come back to life. They are marching with us not only
in spirit; they are alive, too. And one of those who will accompany us into the most distant
future will be this dead man. May that be our sacred vow in this hour, that we wish to ensure
that this dead man take his place in the ranks of our Volk's immortal martyrs. From his death
shall hence come forth life a millionfold for our Volk. That Jewish murderer did not suspect
or foresee that, by killing one, he would awaken millions upon millions of comrades to a
truly German life long into the most distant future. Just as it was formerly impossible to
hinder the triumphant march of our Movement by means of such deeds, for the opposite was
the case-these dead became the banner bearers of our idea- so shall this deed too in no way
hinder Germans abroad from belonging to our Movement and to the German Fatherland.
Quite the contrary, now every Ortsgruppe abroad has a National Socialist patron, a sacred
martyr for the Movement and for our idea. From now on his picture will hang in every
headquarters. His name will be engraved upon every heart, and he will nevermore be
forgotten for all time to come.

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That is our pledge. This deed will fall back upon its doer. It is not Germany that will be
weakened by it, but the power which committed this crime.

The German Volk has lost one of its living in the year 1936, but has gained an
immortal for the future!

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Adolf Hitler - speech before representatives
of the German automobile industry

February 15, 1936

Cjjf believe it is particularly fitting on a day such as this, if merely to counter the

^J) forgetfulness of mankind, to stress those factors which have been psychologically

V. responsible for the sorry decline of our automobile industry and thus of our

transportation industry as a whole, that is to say of that industry which can currently be

described as the single most powerful industry and which is thus called upon to put its unique

and characteristic stamp on today's age.

1. One factor responsible for this decline on the part of the consumer was the view
originating in the social-democratic theory of equality, that it was necessary for the human
race to become a race of primitives, which was to be accomplished by proletarianizing the
standard of living for all so as to arrive at a level shared by as many as possible. This more
than primitive idea proceeded on the limited assumption that human progress was rooted in
the collective masses and was therefore to be valued or rejected as a collective manifestation.

The fact is, however, that every act of human progress, seen from a mental and
objective point of view, originates with a very few individuals; from a mental viewpoint,
because the invention is born only of the imagination of individuals and not of the cross-
section of a collective endeavor; objectively, because each human invention, regardless of
whether its value is recognized or underestimated, always appears initially to be an additional
pleasure in everyday life and thus a luxury article for a more or less limited circle. It is not an
isolated incident, but rather unfortunately quite often the case that this circle is regarded by
the amiable collective of fellow mankind as being crazy-as this was, in fact, the case with our
great inventors Benz and Daimler. Thus a truly progressive development is only possible
given respect for individual creative power and for the similarly unique mental receptivity
and actual marketability.

It is not proof of the falseness, but rather proof of the accuracy of this statement that the
Marxist state, in order to limp along after mankind on its mental collective crutches,
practically borrows the individual engineers, draftsmen, managers, inspectors, chemists, etc.,
from individually organized economies to enable it to cultivate its original Marxist economy
with their generous assistance. This merely serves, of course, to show that just as the rest of
the world was able to achieve culture without Bolshevism; Bolshevism itself would be unable
to survive as a Communist entity all of its own without the help of the rest of the world.

This insight is significant because concentrated support particularly for our modern
transportation industry is dependent upon the complete liberty of a Volk to make use of it,
not only in terms of legislative liberty, but above all in terms of psychological liberty. It is
just as antisocial to buy oneself an automobile as it once was to insert a piece of modern glass
in one's window instead of using the traditional oiled hide. The evolution of such an
invention necessarily proceeds from a very few persons, also its being put into practice, to
then spread to increasingly larger circles, ultimately reaching everyone. Thus it was no
coincidence that the lowest percentage of automobiles-after Communist-Marxist Soviet
Russia-was seen in Germany which, at that time, also had a Marxist government.

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2. Due to the fact that, in the long term, the ideology of the masses cannot and will not
forever stand in opposition to the ideology of those in government and vice versa, it was only
too natural that, originating from this common root of ignorance and irrationality, those in
government acted on the Marxist theory of primitiveness, and for their part, also regarded the
automobile as something unnecessary-and thus as something superfluous- and set taxes
accordingly. A capital error, I might add, which served to show how badly our own bourgeois
economic views were already failing. For the theory of so-called luxury tax articles is absurd
wherever and whenever in all human probability the luxury article promises to become an
article of general use. Above all, one should not tax those products which are in the process
of development, but rather those whose development can clearly be deemed to be finished.

It goes without saying that, on the basis of such false thinking, all those specific steps
which could be conducive toward promoting the development of this so incredibly promising
and propitious industry were neglected or even completely ignored. Fiscal authorities and
police headquarters cooperated to choke off and stamp out the development of German road
traffic and with it the transportation industry as thoroughly as possible, and- this is one
compliment which must be made to the Marxist-Centrist governments-they succeeded
brilliantly in their joint attack. Whereas in America approximately twenty-three million
automobiles were on the roads and three to four million were being manufactured annually,
the combined efforts of the leadership of Volk and state succeeded in limiting the number of
automobiles in Germany to barely 450,000 and in reducing the number produced in the year
1932 to 46,000.

3. The economy itself. It was bad enough that the leadership of Volk and state, under
the influence of such ideas, had no comprehension of the development of motorization; it is
at least as bad that the German economy, albeit perhaps unconsciously, gave in nonetheless
to quite similar thoughts.

Thus the economy was likewise incapable of understanding that the automobile must
become a tool for the general public, for otherwise the broad potential for development
slumbering therein will not be realized. The automobile is either a costly luxury object for
very few and thus of no particular consequence in the long term for the economy as a whole,
or it should truly give the economy the enormous impetus of which it is intrinsically capable,
and then it must evolve from a luxury object for very few to an object of use for all. And this
is where the German automobile industry-and I fear this is still a general view-was not yet
fully aware of the fact that the development of German automobile production as a whole can
only truly be successful if its pricing is commensurate with the incomes of the customer
groups it is to reach.

The question as to the number of automobiles Germany can bear is very easy to
answer.

a) The desire for automobiles in our Volk is at least as lively as in any other country; I
would almost like to say that the yearning for automobiles is so strongly in evidence here
because our Volk has been deprived of them. And gentlemen, you can see the best proof of
this in the enormous, incomparable numbers of visitors, particularly at these exhibitions.
They are the most pointed disproof of the view held by those who believed, only a few years
ago, that they could completely dispense with these exhibitions as being merely insignificant
and uninteresting. The German Volk has exactly the same need to use automobiles as, for
instance, the American people. It is superficial to regard a quantity of twenty-three or twenty-

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four million automobiles in America as natural and understandable and 500,000 or 600,000
as such in Germany, although in terms of numbers the German Volk makes up somewhat
more than half of the population of the North American Union. No, the people's requirement
is given in Germany, too.

b) The prerequisite for the fulfillment of this desire can, however, be no different from
the rest of the world. That means that the price of an automobile must correspond to the
income of its potential buyer. And that means that there will be people who are in a position
to sacrifice 20,000 marks and more for an automobile because their income is proportionate.
But the number of these people will not be large. Lowering the cost to 10,000 marks will
result in a much greater number of respective able buyers. And lowering the cost of a car to
5,000 marks will mobilize an even greater group with corresponding incomes. All this
means: If I hope to achieve a volume of three or four million automobiles in Germany, then
the price and maintenance costs for these automobiles must be graded to correspond to the
incomes of the three or four million potential buyers. I advise the German automobile
industry to proceed on the basis of these ideas and gather information on the income situation
of the four or five million best-situated Germans, and you will then understand why I am so
ruthlessly determined to have the preliminary work for producing the German Volkswagen
carried on and brought to a conclusion, and, gentlemen, I am talking about a successful
conclusion.

I do not doubt that the genius of the constructor 44 entrusted with the task as well as the
subsequent manufacturers, in connection with the highest insights into national economy on
the part of all those involved, will succeed in putting the costs of acquisition, operation and
maintenance for this car in a ratio acceptable to the income of this broad mass of our Volk, as
we can see has successfully been accomplished in the brilliant example of America.

It is a regrettable error for anyone to believe in this context that such a development
will move the buyers of better and more expensive cars to drop down to the Volkswagen. No,
gentlemen, this car will act to mobilize millions, of whom hundreds of thousands will all the
more easily find their way to better and more attractive cars as a result of their continuously
rising standard of living.

The Ford car did not displace better and more expensive American automobiles-on the
contrary: it served initially to loosen up and mobilize the enormous masses of American
buyers, From whom particularly the more expensive models later profited.

Hence in finding two or three million buyers for a new German Volkswagen, there will
be some who, in the course of their lives, will quite naturally switch to better and thus more
expensive cars of their own accord. A great number will never be in a position to purchase an
expensive car. Not because these people have no desire to do Mr. Manufacturer Whoever a
favor but because they are unable to do so because of their modest income. Yet to simply
exclude these millions from the pleasure of this modern means of transport because one is
unwilling to run the risk that, of the two or three hundred thousand better-situated people,
perhaps a few could buy the cheaper car, would be not only humanly unprincipled, but also
economically unwise.

For this would mean nothing but artificially bringing to a halt the most tremendous
economical development for our Volk and our country out of both selfish and shortsighted
considerations.

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I know that I am thus assigning an extremely large task to the German economy, but I
also know that Germans are no less capable than anyone else in the world. And matters
which have been solved in one corner of the globe can and must be solved in Germany as
well.

1. The crisis of Germany's fuel supply, whose paramount significance we can gauge
particularly at the present time^in political terms, can be considered overcome. Our chemists
and inventors have truly accomplished wonders, particularly in this sector as a whole. And
trust in our determination to put this theoretical solution into practice! 2. In this exhibition,
you will find for the first time tires made of German synthetic rubber. And it is my pleasure
to inform you and the German Volk at this time that the performance tests which have been
conducted by the Wehrmacht for nearly a year now have shown that this synthetic rubber
surpasses natural crude rubber in terms of life and durability by ten to thirty percent.

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Adolf Hitler - speech at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich

February 24, 1936

(jjft was the first major rally our Movement had ever held in which we can say that the
.JJ Volk participated. For the first time the internal organization was tested in a large
V. hall, and it worked. For the first time people came to us who wanted to listen. We
certainly had not lacked the courage to summon the masses, but for a long time the masses
lacked the courage to hear our call. It so happened that the man from whom I had rented the
hall only gave it after I had made advance payment, although to be fair I would like to add
that the situation later changed.

At that first rally we announced our twenty-five points-which our opponents ridiculed-
for the first time, to implement them item for item in the years thereafter. And finally, I
myself spoke to a large crowd of people for the first time in this hall, although someonesj had
told me I had any number of talents, but speaking was not one of them. I had to assert myself
at that large rally, which was not as well-mannered as it is today. Things were rather
primitive, and most of the men were not wearing collars out of solidarity, so as not to attract
attention.

Later my opponents conceived of the idea of calling me "the drummer" for years
afterwards. In any case, that first rally was significant in that it was the first mass rally of our
Party, it announced our program and produced a new speaker.

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Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag

March 7, 1936

Men of the German Reichstag!

le President of the German Reichstag, Party Comrade Goring, convened today's
session at my request in order to give you an opportunity to hear a declaration
'from the Reich Government pertaining to questions which instinctively are
regarded not only by yourselves but by the entire German Volk as important, if not to say
decisive.

X>fr«

When in the gray November days of 1918 the curtain was lowered on the bloody
tragedy of the Great War ...

However, I have a right to lay these views of mine open before you gentlemen,
Deputies of the Reichstag, for they constitute both the explanation for our own political
experience, for our internal work among the Volk and for our external standpoint.

Since the rest of the world often talks about a "German question," it will be wise to
reach for ourselves an objective clarification on the essence of this question. Some regard the
"question" as being the German regime itself, as being the completely misunderstood
difference between the German regime and the other regime, as being the so-called
"rearmament" perceived as threatening, and as being all those things one imagines one sees
as a mirage ensuing from this rearmament. For many, this question is rooted in the German
Volk's alleged lust for war, in its slumbering plans for offensive or in its diabolical skill in
outwitting its opponents. No, my dear politicians ! The German question is something entirely
different.

Here we have sixty-seven million people62 living on a very limited and only partially
fertile area. That means approximately 136 persons per square kilometer. These people are no
less industrious than other European peoples; they are no less demanding; they are no less
intelligent and they have no less will to live. They have just as little desire to allow
themselves to be heroically shot dead for some fantasy as, for instance, a Frenchman or an
Englishman does.

Neither are these sixty-seven million Germans more cowardly; and by no means do
they have less honor than members of the other European nations.

Once they were torn into a war in which they believed no more than other Europeans
and for which they bore just as little responsibility. Today's young German of twenty-five
had just celebrated his first birthday during the pre-war years and at the beginning of the war;
thus, he can hardly be held responsible for this catastrophe of the nations. Yes, even the
youngest German who could have been responsible was twenty-five years old when the
German voting age was fixed. Hence he is today at least fifty years old. That means that the
overwhelming majority of men in the German Volk were simply forced to take part in the
war, just as was the bulk of the survivors from the French or English peoples. If they were

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decent, they did their duty then-if they were already of age -just as well as every decent
Frenchman and Englishman. If they were not decent, they failed to do this and perhaps
earned money instead or worked for the revolution. These people are no longer in our ranks
today, but live for the most part as emigrants with some host or another. This German Volk
has just as many merits as other peoples, and naturally just as many disadvantages and
weaknesses, too.

The German question lay in the fact that this Volk-even as late as, for example, 1935,
and on the basis of a guilt it had never committed-was to be made to suffer lesser rights
which constitute an intolerable burden to an honorloving Volk, a torment to an industrious
Volk, and an outrage to an intelligent Volk. The German question also means that one is
attempting, by way of a system of unreasonable actions, measures and hate-filled
incitements, to make even more difficult the already hard battle to assert the right to live, and
to make it more difficult not only artificially, but perversely and absurdly.

For the rest of the world does not profit in the slightest from making it more difficult
for Germany to maintain its life. There is eighteen times less land per capita of the population
in respect to the German being than, for instance, in respect to a Russian. It is understandable
how hard the mere fight for one's daily bread must be and is. Without the efficiency and
industriousness of the German peasant and the organizational ability of the German Volk, it
would hardly be possible for these sixty-seven million to lead their lives. Yet what are we to
think of the mental naivety of those who perhaps recognize these difficulties yet nonetheless
celebrate our misery in childish glee in articles, publications and lectures, who moreover
actually hunt down every indication of this, our inner plight, to tell it to the rest of the world?
Apparently they would be pleased were our distress even worse, were we not able to succeed
over and over again in making it bearable by industriousness and intelligence.

They have no idea how the German question would present a completely different
picture were the abilities and industriousness of these millions to falter, whereby not only
misery but also political unreason would come into evidence. This, too, is one of the German
questions, and the world cannot but be interested in seeing that this matter of securing a
German means of living year after year is successfully solved, just as it is my desire that the
German Volk will also comprehend and respect a happy solution to these vital questions for
other peoples, just as in its very own best interest.

However, mastering this German question is initially a matter involving the German
Volk itself and need not concern the rest of the world. It touches upon the interests of other
peoples only to the extent that the German Volk is forced, when solving this problem, to
establish contact in an economic sense with other peoples as buyers and sellers.

And this is where, again, it will be solely in the interests of the rest of the world to
understand this question, i.e. to comprehend the fact that the cry for bread in a Volk
consisting of forty, fifty, or sixty million is not some sly feat of malice on the part of the
regime or certain governments but rather a natural expression of the urge to assert one's right
to live; and that well-fed peoples are more reasonable than those who are hungry; and that not
only the respective government should have an interest in securing sufficient nourishment for
its citizens, but the surrounding states and peoples should as well; and that it therefore lies in
the interest of all to make it possible to assert one's right to live in the highest sense of the
word. It was the privilege of the pre-war age to take up the opposite view and proclaim it a
state of war, namely the opinion that one part of the European family of peoples would fare

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all the better, the worse another part fared The German Volk needs no special assistance to
assert its own life. It wants, however, to have opportunities no worse than those given to
other peoples. This is one of the German questions.

And the second German question is the following: because, as a result of the extremely
unfortunate general circumstances and conditions, the economic life-struggle of the German
Volk is very strenuous-whereas the intelligence, industriousness, and hence the natural
standard of living are in contrast very high-an extraordinary exertion of all our energies is
required in order to master this first German question. Yet this can only be accomplished if
this Volk enjoys a feeling of political security in an external sense.

In this world, it is impossible to maintain-or much less lead-a Volk of honor and
bravery as Helots for any length of time.

There is no better confirmation of the German Volk's innate love of peace than the fact
that, in spite of its ability and in spite of its bravery-which cannot be denied, even by our
opponents-and in spite of this Volk's large numbers, it has secured for itself only such a
modest share of the Lebensraum and goods of this world. Yet it is above all this trait of
concentrating increasingly on the inland, so characteristic of German nature, which cannot
bear being abused or shamefully deprived of its rights.

In that the unfortunate Peace Treaty of Versailles was intended to fix the- historically
unique-perpetuation of the outcome of the war in moral terms, it created that very German
question which constitutes a critical burden to Europe if unsolved and, if solved, will be
Europe's liberation. And following the signing of the Peace Treaty in the year 1919, I set
myself the task of one day solving this problem-not because I have any desire to do harm to
France or any other state, but because the German Volk cannot, will not, and shall not bear
the wrong done to it on the long term! In the year 1932, Germany stood at the brink of a
Bolshevist collapse. What this chaos in such a large country would have meant for Europe is
something perhaps certain European statesmen will have an opportunity to observe elsewhere
in future. For my part, I was only able to overcome this crisis of the German Volk, which was
most visibly manifest in the economic sector, by mobilizing the ethical and moral values
common to the German nation. The man who wanted to rescue Germany from Bolshevism
would have to bring about a decision on-and thus a solution for-the question of German
equality of rights. Not in order to do harm to other peoples, but on the contrary: to perhaps
even spare them great harm by preventing a catastrophe from engulfing Germany, the
ultimate consequences of which would be unimaginable for Europe.

For the re-establishment of German equality of rights has had no harmful effect on the
French people. Only the Red revolt and the collapse of the German Reich would have dealt
the European order and the European economy a blow having consequences which,
unfortunately, are virtually beyond the grasp of most European statesmen. This battle for
German equality of rights which I waged for three years does not pose a European question,
but answers one.

It is a truly tragic misfortune that of all things, the Peace Treaty of Versailles created a
situation the French people thought they should be particularly interested in maintaining. As
incapable as this situation was of holding any real advantages for the individual Frenchman,
all the greater was the unreal connection which appeared to exist between the discrimination
of the German Volk by Versailles and the interests of the French. Perhaps the character

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weakness of the German postwar years; of our Governments; and, in particular, of our
parties, was also to blame for the fact that the French people and the serious French
statesmen could not be made sufficiently aware of the inaccuracy of this view. For, the worse
the individual governments before our time were, the more reason they themselves had to
fear the national awakening of the German Volk. Therefore, they were all the more
frightened of any type of national self-awareness, and thus all the more supportive in their
attitude toward the widespread international defamation of the German people. Yes, they
simply needed this disgraceful bondage to prop up their own sorry regimes. Where this
regime finally led Germany was vividly illustrated in the imminent collapse.

Now, of course it was difficult, in view of the fact that our neighbors had become so
firmly accustomed to non-equality of rights, to prove that a reestablishment of German
equality of rights would not only do no harm to them, but on the contrary: in the final
analysis, it would be useful internationally.

You, my Deputies and men of the Reichstag, know the difficult path I have had to take
since that thirtieth of January 1933 in order to redeem the German Volk from its unworthy
situation, to then secure for it, step by step, equality of rights, without removing it from the
political and economic community of the European nations and, particularly, without creating
a new enmity in the process of settling an old one.

One day I will be able to demand from history confirmation of the fact that at no time
in the course of my struggle on behalf of the German Volk did I forget the duties I myself
and all of us are obligated to assume toward maintaining European culture and civilization.

However, it is a prerequisite for the existence of this continent, which ultimately owes
its uniqueness to the diversity of its cultures, that it is unthinkable without the presence of
free and independent national states.

Each European people may be convinced that it has made the greatest contribution to
our Western culture. On the whole, however, we would not wish to do without any of what
the separate peoples have given, and thus we do not wish to argue over the value of their
respective contributions. Rather, we must recognize that the greatest achievements in the
most diverse areas of human culture doubtless stem from the rivalry between individual
European accomplishments.

Therefore, although we are willing to cooperate in this European world of culture as a
free and equal member, we are just as stubbornly determined to remain what we are.

In these three years, I have again and again attempted-unfortunately all too often in
vain-to build a bridge of understanding to the people of France. The further we get from the
bitterness of the World War and the years that followed it, the more the evil fades in human
memory, and the more the better things of life, knowledge, and experience advance to the
fore.

Those who once faced one another as bitter foes today honor each other as brave
fighters in a great struggle of the past, and once again recognize one another as responsible
for maintaining and upholding a great shared cultural inheritance.

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Why should it not be possible to terminate the futile, centuries -old strife which has not
brought either of the peoples a final settlement-and which never will-and replace it by the
consideration of a higher reason? The German Volk has no interest in seeing the French
suffer, and vice versa: how would France profit if Germany were to come to ruin? What use
is it to the French peasant if the German peasant fares badly-or vice versa? Or what
advantage does the French worker have from the distress of the German worker? And what
blessing could it hold for Germany, for the German worker, the German Mittelstand, for the
German Volk as a whole, if France were to fall prey to misfortune? I have attempted to solve
the problems of a hate-filled theory of class conflict within Germany's borders by means of a
higher reason, and I have been successful. Why should it not be possible to remove the
problem of the general European differences between peoples and states from the sphere of
irrationality and passion and to place it in the calm light of a higher insight? In any case, I
once swore to myself that I would fight with persistence and bravery for German equality of
rights and make it a reality one way or another,63 but also that I would strengthen the feeling
of responsibility for the necessity of mutual consideration and cooperation in Europe.

When today my international opponents confront me with the fact that I refuse to
practice this cooperation with Russia, I must counter this assertion with the following: I
rejected and continue to reject this cooperation not with Russia, but with the Bolshevism
which lays claim to world rulership.

I am a German, I love my Volk and am attached to it. I know that it can only be happy
if allowed to live in accordance with its nature and its way. The German Volk has been able
not only to cry, but also to laugh heartily all its life, and I do not want the horror of the
Communist international dictatorship of hatred to descend upon it. I tremble for Europe at the
thought of what would lie in store for our old, heavily populated continent were the chaos of
the Bolshevist revolution rendered successful by the infiltrating force of this destructive
Asiatic concept of the world, which subverts all our established ideals. I am perhaps for many
European statesmen a fantastic, or at any rate uncomfortable, harbinger of warnings. That I
am regarded in the eyes of the international Bolshevist oppressors of the world as one of their
greatest enemies is for me a great honor and a justification for my actions in the eyes of
posterity.

I cannot prevent other states from taking the paths they believe they must or at least
believe they can take, but I shall prevent Germany from taking this road to ruin. And I
believe that this ruin would come at that point at which the leadership of state decides to
stoop to become an ally at the service of such a destructive doctrine.

I would see no possibility of conveying in clear terms to the German worker the
threatening misfortune of Bolshevist chaos which so deeply troubles me were I myself, as
Fuhrer of the nation, to enter into close dealings with this very menace. As a statesman and
the Fuhrer of the Volk, I wish to also do myself all those things I expect and demand from
each of my Volksgenossen. I do not believe that statesmen can profit from closer contact with
a Weltanschauung which is the ruin of any people.

In the past twenty years of German history, we have had ample opportunity to gain
experience in this sector. Our initial contact with Bolshevism in the year 1917 brought us the
revolution one year later. The second encounter with it sufficed to put Germany near the
brink of a Communist collapse within but a few years' time. I broke off these relations and
thus jerked Germany back from the verge of destruction.

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Nothing can persuade me to go any other way than that dictated by experience, insight
and foresight.

And I know that this conviction has grown to become the most profound body of
thought and ideas for the entire National Socialist Movement. With persistent tenacity we
shall solve the social problems and tensions in our Volk by means of carrying on the
evolutionary process, thereby ensuring for ourselves the blessing of a peaceful development
from which all of our Volksgenossen will profit. And each of the many new tasks we will
encounter in this process will fill us with the joy of those who are incapable of living without
work and hence without a task to perform.

When I apply this basic attitude to European politics at large, I find that Europe is
divided into two halves: one comprised of self-sufficient and independent national states, of
peoples with whom we are linked a thousandfold by history and culture and with whom we
wish to continue to be linked for all time in the same manner as with the free and self-
sufficient nations of the non-European continents; and the other governed by the very same
intolerant Bolshevist doctrine claiming general international supremacy, which even preaches
the destruction of the immortal values-sacred to us-of this world and the next, in order to
built a different world whose culture, exterior and content seem abhorrent to us. Except for
the given political and economic international relations, we do not wish to have any closer
contact with that.

It is infinitely tragic that, in conclusion of our long years of sincerely endeavoring to
obtain the trust, sympathy and affection of the French people, a military alliance was sealed,
the beginning of which we know today, but-if Providence is not once again more merciful
than mankind deserves-the end of which will perhaps have unforeseeable consequences. In
the past three years I have endeavored to slowly but surely establish the prerequisites for a
German-French understanding. In doing so, I have never left a single doubt that an absolute
equality of rights and thus the same legal status of the German Volk and State form part of
the prerequisites for such an understanding. I have consciously regarded this understanding
not only as a problem to be solved by means of pacts, but as a problem which must first be
brought home psychologically to the two peoples, for it has to be prepared not only in mental,
but also in emotional terms. Thus I was often confronted with the reproach that my offers of
friendship contained no specific proposals. That is not correct.

I bravely and explicitly proposed everything that could in any way possibly be
proposed to lessen the tension of German-French relations.

I did not hesitate on one occasion to join a concrete arms proposal for a limit of
200,000 men. When this proposal was abandoned by those responsible for drawing it up, I
approached the French people and the European Governments with a new, quite specific
proposal. This proposal for 300,000 men was also rejected. I have made a whole series of
further concrete proposals aimed at eliminating the poison from public opinion in the
individual states and at cleaning up methods of warfare, and thus ultimately at a slow yet,
therefore, sure reduction in arms. Only one of these German proposals was given any real
consideration. A British Government's sense of realism accepted my proposal for
establishing a permanent ratio between the German and English fleets, which both
corresponds to the needs of German security and, conversely, takes into account the
enormous overseas interests of a great world empire. I may also point out here that, to date,

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this agreement has remained practically the only truly considerate and thus successful attempt
to limit arms. The Reich Government is willing to supplement this treaty by a further
qualitative agreement with England.

I have expressed the very concrete principle that the collective programs of an
international Paktomanie have as little chance of becoming reality as the general proposals
for world disarmament which have been shown from the very onset to be impracticable under
such circumstances. In contrast, I have stressed that these questions can only be approached
step by step more specifically in that direction from which there is presumably the least
resistance. Based upon this conviction, I have also developed the concrete proposal for an air
pact grounded on a parity of strength between France, England and Germany. The
consequence was that this proposal was initially ignored, and then a new Eastern-European-
Asiatic factor was introduced on the stage of European equilibrium, the military ramifications
of which are incalculable. Thus, for long years I took the trouble to make concrete proposals,
yet I do not hesitate to state that the psychological preparation for the understanding has
seemed just as important to me as the so-called concrete proposals, and I have done more in
this area than any honest foreign statesman could ever have even hoped. I removed the
question of the everlasting revision of European borders from the atmosphere of public
discussion in Germany.64 Yet, unfortunately, it is often held, and this applies particularly to
foreign statesmen, that this attitude and its actions are not of any particular significance. I
may point out that it would have been equally possible for me as a German, in a moral sense,
to place the restoration of the 1914 borders on my program and to support this item in
publications and oratory, just as the French ministers and popular leaders did after 1871, for
instance. My esteemed critics would do better not to deny me any ability whatsoever in this
sector.

It is much more difficult for a National Socialist to persuade a Volk to come to an
understanding than to do the opposite. And for me it would probably have been easier to
whip up the instinct for revenge than to awaken and constantly amplify a feeling for the
necessity of a European understanding. And that is what I have done. I have rid German
public opinion of attacks of this sort against our neighboring peoples.

I have removed from the German press all animosity against the French people. I have
endeavored to awaken in our youth a sense for the ideal of such an understanding, and was
certainly not unsuccessful. When the French guests entered the Olympic Stadium in
Garmisch-Partenkirchen several weeks ago, they perhaps had an opportunity to observe
whether and to what extent I have been successful in bringing about this inner conversion of
the German Volk.

This inner willingness to seek and find such an understanding is, however, more
important than clever attempts by statesmen to ensnare the world in a net of pacts obscure as
to both legal and factual content.

These efforts on my part have, however, been twice as difficult because at the same
time I was forced to disentangle Germany from the web of a treaty which had robbed it of its
equality of rights and which the French people- whether rightly or wrongly is secondary-
believed it to be in their best interest to uphold. Being a German nationalist, I above all was
forced to make yet another particularly difficult sacrifice for the German Volk in that context.

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At least in modern times, the attempt had not yet been made following a war to simply
deny the loser its sovereign rights over large and long-standing parts of its empire. It was
only in the interest of this understanding that I bore this, the most difficult sacrifice we could
be made to bear politically and morally, and had intended to continue bearing it for the sole
reason that I believed it was necessary to abide by a treaty 65 which could perhaps contribute to
eliminating the poison from the political atmosphere between France and Germany and
England and Germany and to spreading a feeling of security on all sides.

Yes, beyond that I have often-in this forum, too-upheld the standpoint that we are not
only willing to make this most difficult contribution to safeguarding peace in Europe as long
as the other partners fulfill their obligations; furthermore, we view this treaty-because
concrete-as the only possible attempt to safeguard Europe.

You, my Deputies, are acquainted with the letter and spirit of this treaty.

It was to prevent the use of force for all time between Belgium and France on the one
hand and Germany on the other. But unfortunately the treaties of alliance which France had
concluded at an earlier date presented the first obstacle, although this obstacle did not
contradict the essence of that Pact, namely, the Rhine Pact of Locarno. Germany's
contribution to this Pact presented the greatest sacrifice, for while France fortified its border
with steel, cement and arms, and equipped it with numerous garrisons, we were made to bear
the burden of permanently maintaining total defenselessness in the West.

We nonetheless complied with this, too, in the hope of serving-by making that
contribution, one so difficult for a major power-the cause of European peace and promoting
an understanding between nations.

Now, this Pact is in contradiction to the agreement France entered into last year with
Russia which has already been signed and just recently received the Chamber's approval.
For, by virtue of this new Franco-Soviet agreement, the threatening military power of a huge
empire has been given access to Central Europe via the detour of Czechoslovakia, which has
signed a similar treaty with Russia. The incredible thing in this context is that these two states
have undertaken an obligation in their treaty, regardless of any presently existing or
anticipated rulings of the Council of the League of Nations, to clarify the question of guilt in
the event of an Eastern-European complication at their own discretion and to thus consider
the obligation to render mutual assistance as given or not, as the case may be.

The claim that the former obligation was canceled in this Pact by virtue of a
supplemental restriction is incomprehensible. I cannot in one context define a certain
procedure as a clear breach of obligations otherwise valid and hence thereby assume that
such procedure is binding, and in another context declare that no action is to be taken which
violates these other obligations. In such a case, the first binding obligation would be
unreasonable and thus make no sense.

But this is first and foremost a political problem and is to be rated as such with all its
weighty significance.

France did not conclude this treaty with any arbitrary European power.

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Even prior to the Rhine Pact, France had treaties of mutual assistance both with
Czechoslovakia and with Poland. Germany took no offense at this, not only because such
pacts-in contrast to the Franco-Soviet Pact-recognized the authority of rulings passed by the
League of Nations, but also because the Czechoslovakia of that time, and particularly Poland
as well, will always basically uphold a policy of representing these states' own national
interests.

Germany has no desire to attack these states and does not believe it will lie in the
interest of these states to prepare an offensive against Germany. But above all: Poland will
remain Poland, and France will remain France.

Soviet Russia, in contrast, is the exponent of a revolutionary Weltanschauung
organized as a state. Its concept of the state is the creed of world revolution. It is not possible
to rule out that tomorrow or the day after, this Weltanschauung will have conquered France
as well. However, should this be the case-and as a German statesman I must be prepared-then
it is a certainty that this new Bolshevist state would become a section in the Bolshevist
International, which means that the decision as to aggression or non-aggression will not be
made by two separate states according to their own objective judgment, but instead by
directives issuing from a single source. And in the event of such a development, this source
would no longer be Paris, but Moscow.

If only for mere territorial reasons, Germany is not in a likely position to attack
Russia,66yet Russia is all the more in a position to bring about a conflict with Germany at any
time via the detour of its advanced positions. Ascertaining the aggressor would then be a
foregone conclusion, for the decision would be independent of the findings of the Council of
the League of Nations.

Allegations or objections that France and Russia would do nothing which might expose
them to sanctions-on the part of England or Italy-are immaterial, because one cannot begin to
gauge which type of sanctions might possibly be effective against such an overwhelming
construction so unified in both weltanschaulich and military terms.

For many years we anxiously warned of such a development, not only because we have
more to fear from it than others, but because it may one day bring with it dire consequences
for the whole of Europe, if one attempts to dismiss these, our most serious apprehensions, by
citing the unfinished state of the Russian instrument of war, or even its unwieldiness and
unfitness for deployment in a European war. We have always combated this view, not
because we are somehow of the conviction that the German is inherently inferior, but because
we all know that numbers, too, have their own weight. We are all the more grateful that M.
Herriote? has just enlightened the French Chamber as to Russia's aggressive-military
significance. We know that M.

Herriot's information was given to him by the Soviet Government itself, and we are
certain that this party cannot have supplied the spiritual inspirer of the new alliance in France
with false propaganda; we similarly do not doubt that M.

Herriot has given a true account of this information. Yet according to this information,
it is a fact that the Russian army has a peacetime strength of 1,350,000 men; that secondly, it
has a total of 17,500,000 men ready for war and in the reserves; that thirdly, it is equipped
with the largest tank weaponry; and fourthly, that it supports the largest air force in the world.

304

Introducing this enormous military factor-which was described as being excellent in
terms of its mobility and leadership as well as ready for action at any time-onto the Central
European stage will destroy any genuine European equilibrium. This will furthermore present
an obstacle to any possibility of estimating what means of defense on land and in the air are
necessary for the European states involved, and particularly for the sole country targeted as
an opponent: Germany.

This gigantic mobilization of the East against Central Europe contradicts not only the
letter, but above all the spirit of the Locarno Pact. We are not alone in feeling this because we
are directly involved; rather, this view thrives among innumerable intelligent men of all
nations and has been openly upheld everywhere, as has been documented in publications and
politics.

On February 21, a French journalist&8 approached me with the request that I grant him
an interview. Because I had been told that the person in question was one of those very
Frenchmen who, like ourselves, is endeavoring to find ways of arriving at an understanding
between our two peoples, I was all the less inclined to refuse, particularly since such an
action would have instantly been interpreted as an indication of my lack of respect toward
French journalism. I provided the desired information, just as I have openly given it in
Germany hundreds and thousands of times, and I once more attempted to address the French
people with a plea for the understanding to which we are dedicated with all our hearts and
which we would so dearly like to see become reality. At the same time, however, I did
express my deep regret as regards the threatening developments in France brought about by
the conclusion of a pact for which, in our opinion, there was no conceivable necessity, yet
which, were it to come into being, by necessity, would create a new state of affairs. As you
all know, this interview was held back for reasons unknown to us and was not published until
the day after ratification in the French Chamber.

As much as I will continue in the future to be ready and sincerely willing, as I stated in
that interview, to promote this German-French understanding-for I see in it a necessary factor
in safeguarding Europe from immeasurable dangers and because I do not expect and indeed
am incapable of even perceiving any advantages whatsoever for the two peoples from any
other course of behavior; while I do, however, perceive the gravest general and international
dangers-I was all the more compelled by the knowledge of the final signing of this Pact to
enter into a review of the new situation thus created and to draw the necessary conclusions.

These conclusions are of an extremely grave nature, and they fill us and myself
personally with a bitter regret. However, I am obligated not only to make sacrifices for the
sake of European understanding, but also to bow to the interests of my own Volk.

As long as a sacrifice meets with appreciation and understanding on the part of the
opposition, I will gladly pursue that sacrifice and recommend to the German Volk that it do
the same. Yet as soon as it becomes evident that a partner no longer values or appreciates this
sacrifice, this must result in a onesided burden for Germany and hence in a discrimination we
cannot tolerate. In this historic hour and within these walls, however, I would like to repeat
what I stated in my first major speech before the Reichstag in May 1933: The German Volk
would rather undergo any amount of suffering and distress than abandon the precept of honor
and the will to freedom and equality of rights.

305

If the German Volk is to be of any value to European cooperation, it can be of value
only as an honor-loving and hence equal partner. As soon as it ceases to be valuable in terms
of this integrity, it becomes worthless in objective terms as well. I would not like to deceive
ourselves or the rest of the world with a Volk which would then be completely without value,
for it would lack the essentially natural feeling of honor.

I also believe, however, that even in the hour of such a bitter realization and grave
decision, in spite of everything, one must not refrain from supporting European cooperation
all the more and from seeking new ways to make it possible to solve these problems in a
manner beneficial to all.

Thus I have continued my endeavors to express in specific proposals the feelings of the
German Volk which is concerned for its security and willing to make any sacrifice for the
sake of its freedom, but is likewise willing at all times to take part in a truly sincere and
equally-valued European cooperation.

After a difficult inner struggle, I have hence decided on behalf of the German Reich
Government to have the following Memorandum submitted to the French Government and
the other signatories of the Locarno Pact: Memorandum Immediately after the Pact between
France and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which was signed on May 2, 1935
became public, the German Government drew the attention of the Governments of the other
signatory powers of the Rhine Pact of Locarno to the fact that the obligations which France
assumed in the new Pact are not compatible with its obligations according to the Rhine Pact.
At that time, the German Government submitted full legal and political justification for its
standpoint: in legal terms in the German Memorandum dated May 25, 1935, and in political
terms in the numerous diplomatic talks which followed in the wake of this Memorandum.

The Governments concerned are also aware that neither their written responses to the
German Memorandum nor the arguments they brought forth via diplomatic channels or in
public statements were able to discount the standpoint of the German Government.

In fact, the entire diplomatic and public discussion which has ensued since May 1935
on these questions has served merely to confirm every aspect of the position the German
Government has taken from the very beginning.

1. It is an uncontested fact that the Franco-Soviet Agreement is directed exclusively
against Germany.

2. It is an uncontested fact that, under the terms of this Agreement, France will
undertake obligations in the event of a conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union
which far exceed its duty pursuant to the Covenant of the League of Nations and which force
it to take military action against Germany even if it can cite as grounds for such action
neither a recommendation nor even an existing decision of the Council of the League of
Nations.

3. It is an uncontested fact that, in such event, France will also be claiming for itself the
right to decide at its own discretion who is the aggressor.

306

4. Thus it is established that France has entered into obligations vis-a-vis the Soviet
Union which, in practice, are tantamount to its acting as though neither the Covenant of the
League of Nations nor the Rhine Pact, which rests on such Covenant, were in effect.

This consequence of the Franco-Soviet Pact is not canceled out by the fact that France
has therein made the reservation not to be under obligation to take military action against
Germany if, by doing so, it were to expose itself to sanctions on the part of the Guarantor
Powers Italy and Great Britain. Despite this reservation, however, what remains decisive is
the fact that the Rhi

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